PART II—IN LONDON

1912

January 21.

Am at last beginning to get more content with the work at the Museum, so that I muse on Bernard Shaw's saying, "Get what you like or you'll grow to like what you get." I have a terrible suspicion that the security of tenure here is like the lion's den in the fable—Nulla vestiga retrorsum. Of course I am wonderfully proud of being at the Museum, although I am disappointed and write as if I were quite blasé.

January 25.

I should be disappointed if at the end of my career (if I live to see it through) I do not win the F.R.S. I should very much like it.... My nature is very mixed—ambitious above all things and yet soon giddy with the audacity of my aspirations. The B.M. and my colleagues make me feel most inferior in fact, but in theory—in the secrecy of my own bedchamber—I feel that there are few men there my equal.

April 26.

Down with influenza. A boarding-house with the 'flue!

May 8.

Went home to recuperate, a beef jelly in one pocket and sal volatile in the other. On arrival, my blanched appearance frightened Mother and the others, so went to bed at once. "Fate's a fiddler, life's a dance."

May 12.

Weak enough to sit down before dressing-table while I shave and brush my hair. Dyspepsia appalling. The Doctor in Kensington seemed to think me an awful wreck and asked if I were concealing——

Reading Baudelaire and Verlaine.

May 24.

Bathing

Sat on a seat overlooking the sand-hills with stick between my legs like an old man, and watched a buxom wench aet. 25 run down the path pursued by "Rough" and two little girls in blue. Later they emerged from a striped bathing tent in the glory of blue bathing dresses. It made me feel quite an old man to see the girl galloping out over the hard level sands to the breakers, a child clinging to each hand. Legs and arms twinkled in the sun which shone with brilliance. If life were as level as those sands and as beautiful as that trio of girls!

May 26.

Two Young Men Talking

With H—— in his garden. He is a great enthusiast.

"I disapprove entirely of your taste in gardening," I said. "You object to the 'ragged wilderness' style, I like it. You like lawns laid out for croquet and your privet hedges pruned into 'God Save the King' or 'Dieu et mon droit.' My dear boy, if you saw Mr. ——'s wilderness at ----you'd be so shocked you'd cut and run, and I imagine there'd be an affecting reunion between you and your beloved geraniums. For my part, I don't like geraniums: they're suburban, and all of a piece with antimacassars and stuffed birds under glass bells. The colour of your specimens, moreover," I rapped out, "is vulgar—like the muddied petticoats of old market women."

H——, quite unmoved, replied slowly, "Well, here are some like the beautiful white cambric of a lady of fashion. You've got no taste in flowers—you're just six feet of grief and patience." We roared with laughing.

"Do stop watering those damned plants," I exclaimed at last. But he went on. I exclaimed again and out of sheer ridiculousness, in reply he proceeded to water the cabbages, the gravel path, the oak tree—and me! While I writhed with laughing.

May 27.

By the Sea

Sat upon a comfortable jetty of rock and watched the waves without a glimmer of an idea in my mind about anything—though to outward view I might have been a philosopher in cerebral parturition with thoughts as big as babies. Instead, little rustling dead leaves of thoughts stirred and fluttered in the brain—the pimple e.g. I recollected on my Aunt's nose, or the boyishness of Dr. ——'s handwriting, or Swinburne's lines: "If the golden-crested wren Were a nightingale—why, then Something seen and heard of men Might be half as sweet as when Laughs a child of seven."

I continued in this pleasurable coma all the afternoon and went home refreshed.

May 29.

Have returned to London and the B.M. My first day at the M. Sat at my table in a state of awful apathy.

At least temporarily, I am quite disenchanted of Zoology. I work—God save the mark—in the Insect Room!

On the way home, purchased:—

Peroxide of hydrogen (pyorrhœa threatened). One bottle of physic (for my appalling dyspepsia).

One flask of brandy for emergencies (as my heart is intermittent again).

Prussic acid next.

Must have been near pneumonia at R——. Auntie was nervous, and came in during the night to see how I was.

June 20.

It caused me anguish to see my article returned from the Fortnightly and lying in a big envelope on the table when I returned home this evening. I can't do any work because of it, and in desperation rushed off to the stately pleasure domes of the White City, and systematically went through all the thrills—from the Mountain Railway to the Wiggle Woggle and the 'Witching Waves.

June 21.

To-day I am easier. The cut worm forgives the plough. But how restless this disappointment has made me.... I have no plans for recuperation and cannot settle down to work.

July 6.

On my doctor's advice, went to see Dr. P——, a lung specialist. M——found a dull spot on one of my lungs, and, not feeling very sure, and without telling me the nature of his suspicion, he arranged for Dr. P—— to see me, allowing me to suppose he was a stomach authority as my dyspepsia is bad.

Well: it is not consumption, but my lungs and physique are such that consumption might easily supervene. As soon as Dr. P—— had gone, M——appended the following lugubrious yarn:—

Whenever I catch cold, I must go and be treated at once, all my leisure must be spent out of doors, I must take cream and milk in prodigious quantities and get fat at all costs. There is even a question of my giving up work.

July 10.

A young but fat woman sitting in the sun and oozing moisture is as nasty as anything in Baudelaire.

July 14.

A "Brilliant Career"

My old head master once prophesied for me "a brilliant career." That was when I was in the Third Form. Now I have more than a suspicion that I am one of those who, as he once pointed out, grow sometimes out of a brilliant boyhood into very commonplace men. This continuous ill health is having a very obvious effect on my work and activities. With what courage I possess I have to face the fact that to-day I am unable to think or express myself as well as when I was a boy in my teens—witness this Journal!

I intend to go on however. I have decided that my death shall be disputed all the way.

Oh! it is so humiliating to die! I writhe to think of being overcome by so unfair an enemy before I have demonstrated myself to maiden aunts who mistrust me, to colleagues who scorn me, and even to brothers and sisters who believe in me.

As an Egotist I hate death because I should cease to be I.

Most folk, when sick unto death, gain a little consolation over the notoriety gained by the fact of their decease. Criminals enjoy the pomp and circumstance of their execution. Voltaire said of Rousseau that he wouldn't mind being hanged if they'd stick his name on the gibbet. But my own death would be so mean and insignificant. Guy de Maupassant died in a grand manner—a man of intellect and splendid physique who became insane. Tusitala's death in the South Seas reads like a romance. Heine, after a life of sorrow, died with a sparkling witticism on his lips; Vespasian with a jest.

But I cannot for the life of me rake up any excitement over my own immediate decease—an unobtrusive passing away of a rancorous, disappointed, morbid, and self-assertive entomologist in a West Kensington Boarding House—what a mean little tragedy! It is hard not to be somebody even in death.

A sing-song to-night in the drawing-room; all the boarding-house present in full muster. There was a German, Schulz, who sat and leered at his inamorata—a sensual-looking, pasty-faced girl—while she gave us daggers-and-moonlight recitations with the most unwarranted self-assurance (she boasts of a walking-on part at one of the theatres); there was Miss M—— listening to her fiancé, Capt. O—— (home from India), singing Indian Love Songs at her; there was Miss T——, a sour old maid, who knitted and snorted, not fully conscious of this young blood coursing around her; Mrs. Barclay Woods pursued her usual avocation of imposing on us all the great weight of her immense social superiority, clucking, in between, to her one chick—a fluffy girl of 18 or 19, who was sitting now in the draught, now too close to a "common" musician of the Covent Garden Opera; finally our hostess, a divorcee, who hated all males, even Tom-cats. We were a pathetic little company—so motley, ill-assorted—who had come together not from love or regard but because man is a gregarious animal. In fact, we sat secretly criticising and contemning one another ... yet outside there were so many millions of people unknown, and overhead the multitude of the stars was equally comfortless.

Later: ... Zoology on occasion still fires my ambition! Surely I cannot be dying yet.

Whatever misfortune befalls me I do hope I shall be able to meet it unflinchingly. I do not fear ill-health in itself, but I do fear its possible effect on my mind and character.... Already I am slowly altering, as the Lord liveth. Already for example my sympathy with myself is maudlin.

Whenever the blow shall fall, some sort of a reaction must be given. Heine flamed into song. Beethoven wrote the 5th Symphony. So what shall I do when my time comes? I don't think I have any lyrics or symphonies to write, so I shall just have to grin and bear it—like a dumb animal.... As long as I have spirit and buoyancy I don't care what happens—for I know that or so long I cannot be accounted a failure. The only real failure is one in which the victim is left spiritless, dazed, dejected with blackness all around, and within, a knife slowly and unrelentingly cutting the strings of his heart.

My head whirls with conflicting emotions, struggling, desperate ideas, and a flood of impressions of all sorts of things that are never sufficiently sifted and arranged to be caught down on paper. I am brought into this world, hustled along it and then hustled out of it, with no time for anything. I want to be on a great hill and square up affairs.

August 28.

... After tea, we all three walked in Kensington Gardens and sat on a seat by the Round Pond. My umbrella fell to the ground, and I left it there with its nose poking up in a cynical manner, as She remarked.

"It's not cynical," I said, "only a little knowing. Won't you let yours fall down to keep it company? Yours is a lady umbrella and a good-looking one—they might flirt together."

"Mine doesn't want to flirt," she answered stiffly.

September 13.

At C——, a tiny little village by the sea in N——.

Looking up from a rockpool, where I had been watching Gobies, I saw three children racing across the sands to bathe, I saw a man dive from a boat, and I saw a horse-man gallop his mare down to the beach and plunge about in the line of breakers. The waters thundered, the mare whinnied, the children shouted to one another, and I turned my head down again to the rockpool with a great thumping heart of happiness: it was so lovely to be conscious of the fact that out there this beautiful picture was awaiting me whenever and as often as I chose to lift my head. I purposely kept my head down, for the picture was so beautiful I did not want to hurt it by breathing on it, and I kept my head down out of a playful self-cheating delight; I decided not to indulge myself.

September 16.

Out in the Bay dredging for Echinoderms with "Carrots." Brilliantly fine. The haul was a failure, but, being out in a boat on a waveless sea under a cloudless sky, I was scarcely depressed at this! We cruised along from one little bay to another, past smugglers' caves and white pebble beaches, the dredge all the while growling along the sea bottom, and "Carrots" and I lying listless in the bows. I was immensely happy. My mercury was positively ringing the bell.

Who, then, is "Carrots"? He is a fine brawny boat-man who jumps over the rocks like a Chamois, swims like a Fish, pulls like an Ox, snorts like a Grampus—a sort of compound zoological perfection, built eclectically.

September 18.

Early Boughies

Up the village, Mrs. Beavan keeps a tiny little shop and runs a very large garden. She showed us all about the garden, and introduced us to her husband, whom we discovered in an apple tree—an old man, aged 76, very hard of hearing, and with an impediment in his speech. He at once began to move his mouth, and I caught odd jingles of sound that sounded like nothing at all—at first, but which gradually resolved themselves on close attention to such familiar landmarks as "Early Boughies," "Stubbits," "Ribstone Pippins" into a discourse on Apples.

The following curious conversation took place between me and the deaf gaffer, aged 76, standing in the apple tree,—

"These be all appulls from Kent—I got 'em all from Kent."

"How long have you lived in C——?"

"Bunyard & Son—that's the firm—they live just outside the town of Maidstone."

"Do you keep Bees here?"

"One of these yer appulls is called Bunyard after the firm—a fine fruit too."

"Your good wife must be of great assistance to you in your work."

"Little stalks maybe, but a large juishy appull for all that."

Just then I heard Mrs. B—— saying to E——,—

"Aw yes, he's very active for 76. A little deaf, but he manages the garden all 'eesulf, I bolsters 'un up wi' meat and drink—little and often as they zay for children.... Now there's a bootifull tree, me dear, that 'as almost beared itself to death, as you may say."

She picked an apple off it shouting to poor Tom still aloft,—

"Tom what's the name of this one?"

"You should come a bit earlier, zir," replied T. "'Tis late a bit now doan't 'ee zee?"

"No—what's its name I want," shouted his spouse.

"Yes, yes, give the lady one to take home—there's plenty for all," he said.

"What is the NAME? THE NAME OF THIS YER APPULL," screamed Mrs. B., and old Tom moving his bones slowly down from the tree answered quite unmoved,—

"Aw the name? Why, 'tis a common kind of appull—there's a nice tree of 'em up there."

"Oh! never mind, 'tis a Gladstone," said Mrs. B., turning to us.

"A very fine Appull," droned the old boy.

September 28.

Back in town again. Wandered about in a somnambulistic way all the afternoon till I found myself taking tea in Kew Gardens. I enjoyed the wind in my face and hair. Otherwise there is nothing to be said—a colourless day.

October 10.

Came across the following arresting sentence: "Pale, anæmic, cadaverous, bad teeth and disordered digestion and a morbid egotism." Yes, but my teeth are not bad.

October 20.

On the N. Downs

Under the oak where I sat the ground was covered with dead leaves. I kicked them, and I beat them with my stick, because I was angry that they were dead. In the coppice, leaves were quietly and majestically floating earthwards in the pomp of death. It was very thrilling to observe them.

It was a curious sensation to realise that since the last time I sat under the old oak I had been right up to the N. of England, then right down to the S.W., and back once more to London town. I bragged about my kinetic activity to the stationary oak and I scoffed at the old hill for having to remain always in the same place.

It gave me a pleasing sense of infinite superiority to come back and see everything the same as before, to sit on the same old seat under the same old oak. Even that same old hurdle was lying in the same position among the bracken. How sorry I was for it! Poor wretch—unable to move—to go to Whitby, to go to C——, to be totally ignorant of the great country of London....

Day dreamed. My own life as it unrolls day by day is a source of constant amazement, delight, and pain. I can think of no more interesting volume than a detailed, intimate, psychological history of my own life. I want a perfect comprehension at least of myself....

We are all such egotists that a sorrow or hardship—provided it is great enough—flatters our self-importance. We feel that a calamity by overtaking us has distinguished us above our fellows. A man likes not to be ignored even by a railway accident. A man with a grievance is always happy.

October 23.

Over to see E——. Came away disillusioned.

October 25.

Met her in Smith's book shop looking quite bewitching. Hang it all, I thought I had finished. Went home with her, watched her make a pudding in the kitchen, then we sat by the firelight in the drawing-room and had supper. Scrumptious (not the supper).

October 27.

Quarrelled with D——! The atmosphere is changed at the flat—my character is ruined. D—— has told them I'm a loose fellow. I've always contrived to give him that impression—I liked to be cutting my throat—and now it's cut!

November 1.

D—— came and carried me off to the flat, where they asked why I hadn't been over—which, of course, pleased me immensely.

November 6.

Doctor M—— is very gloomy about my health and talks of S. Africa, Labrador, and so on. I'm not responding to his treatment as I should.

November 11.

Met her this evening in Kensington Road. "I timed this well," said she, "I thought I should meet you." Good Heavens, I am getting embroiled. Returned to the flat with her and after supper called her "The Lady of Shalott."

"I don't think you know what you're talking about"—this stiffly.

"Perhaps not," I answered. "I leave it to you."

"Oh! but it rests with you," she said.

Am I in love? God knows—but I don't suppose God cares.

November 15.

On M——'s advice went to see a stomach specialist—Dr. Hawkins. As I got there a little too early walked up the street—Portland Place—on the opposite side (from shyness) past an interminable and nauseating series of night bells and brass plates, then down again on the right side till I got to No. 66 which made me flutter—for ten doors ahead I mused is the house I must call at. It made me shiver a little.

The specialist took copious notes of my evidence and after examining me retired to consult with M——. What a parade of ceremony! On coming back, the jury returned a verdict of "Not proven." I was told I ought to go out and live on the prairies—and in two years I should be a giant! But where are the prairies? What 'bus? If I get worse, I must take several months' leave. I think it will come to this.

November 16.

Arthur came down for the week end. He likes the Lady of Shalott. She is "not handsome, but arresting, striking" and "capable of tragedy." That I believe she has achieved already.... If she were a bit more gloomy and a bit more beautiful, she'd be irresistible.

November 22.

He: "Have a cigarette? I enjoy lighting your cigarettes."

She: "I don't know how to smoke properly."

He: "You smoke only as you could."

She: "How's that?"

H.: "Gracefully, of course."

S.: "Do you think I like pretty things being said to me?"

H.: "Why not, if they are true. Flattery is when you tell an ugly woman she is beautiful. Have you so poor an opinion of yourself to think all I say of you is flattery?"

S.: "Yes. I am only four bare walls,—with nothing inside."

H.: "What a deliciously empty feeling that must be. ... But I don't think you're so simple as all that. You bewilder me sometimes."

S.: "Why?"

H.: "I feel like Sindbad the Sailor."

S.: "Why?"

H.: "Because I'm not George Meredith." The title of "husband" frightens me.

December 9.

It's a fearful strain to go on endeavouring to live up to time with a carefully laid-out time-table of future achievements. I am hurrying on with my study of Italian in order to read the Life of Spallanzani in order to include him in my book—to be finished by the end of next year; I am also subsidising Jenkinson's embryological lectures at University College with the more detailed account of practical and experimental work in his text-book; I have also started a lengthy research upon the Trichoptera—all with a horrible sense of time fleeing swiftly and opportunities for work too few ever to be squandered, and, in the background, behind all this feverish activity, the black shadow that I might die suddenly with nothing done—next year, next month, next week, to-morrow, now!

Then sometimes, as to-night, I have misgivings. Shall I do these things so well now as I might once have done them? Has not my ill-health seriously affected my mental powers? Surely the boy of 1908-10 was almost a genius or—seen at this distance—a very remarkable youth in the fanatical zeal with which he sought to pursue, and succeeded in gaining, his own end of a zoological education for himself.

It is a terrible suspicion to cross the mind of an ambitious youth that perhaps, after all, he is a very commonplace mortal—that his life, whether comedy or tragedy, or both, or neither, is any way insignificant, of no account.

It is still more devastating for him to have to consider whether the laurel wreath was not once within his grasp, and whether he must not ascribe his own incalculable loss to his stomach simply.

December 15.

A very bad heart attack. As I write it intermits every three or four beats. Who knows if I shall live thro' to-night?

December 16.

Here I am once more. A passable night. After breakfast the intermittency recommenced—it is better now, with a dropped beat only about once per half-hour, so that I am almost happy after yesterday, which was Hell. The world is too good to give up without remonstrance at the beck of a weak heart.

Before I went to sleep last night, my watch stopped—I at once observed the cessation of its tick and wondered if it were an omen. I was genuinely surprised to find myself still ticking when I awoke this morning. A moment ago a hearse passed down the street.... Yes, but I'm damned if I haven't a right to be morbid after yesterday. To be ill like this in a boarding-house! I'd marry to-morrow if I had the chance.

December 22.

Sollas's "Ancient Hunters"

Read Sollas's book Ancient Hunters—very thrilling—mind full of the Aurignacians, Mousterians, Magdalenians! I have been peering down such tremendous vistas of time and change that my own troubles have been eclipsed into ridiculous insignificance. It has been really a Pillar of Strength to me—a splendid tonic. Palæontology has its comfortable words too. I have revelled in my littleness and irresponsibility. It has relieved me of the harassing desire to live, I feel content to live dangerously, indifferent to my fate; I have discovered I am a fly, that we are all flies, that nothing matters. It's a great load off my life, for I don't mind being such a micro-organism—to me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe—such a great universe, so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my "Soul," my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part—I shall still have some sort of a finger in the Pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me—but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.

December 27.

"It is a pleasure to note the success attending the career of Mr. W.N.P. Barbellion now engaged in scientific work on the staff of the Natural History Museum ..." etc., etc.

This is a cutting from the local paper—one of many that from time to time I once delightedly pasted in the pages of the Journal. Not so now.

... At 23, I am a different being. Surrounded by all the stimulating environment of scientific research, I am cold and disdainful. I keep up the old appearances but underneath it is quite different. I am a hypocrite. I have to wear the mask and cothornoi, finding the part daily more difficult to bear. I am living on my immense initial momentum—while the machinery gradually slows up. My career! Gadzooks.

1913

January 3.

From the drawing-room window I see pass almost daily an old gentleman with white hair, a firm step, broad shoulders, healthy pink skin, a sunny smile—always singing to himself as he goes—a happy, rosy-cheeked old fellow, with a rosy-cheeked mind.... I should like to throw mud at him. By Jove, how I hate him. He makes me wince with my own pain. It is heartless, indecently so, for an old man to be so blithe. Life has, I suppose, never lain in wait for him. The Great Anarchist has spared him a bomb.

January 19.

My Aunt, aged 75, who has apparently concluded from my constant absences from Church that my spiritual life is in a parlous way, to-day read me her portion from a large book with a broad purple-tasseled bookmark. I looked up from "I Promessi Sposi" and said "Very nice." It was about someone whose soul was not saved and who would not answer the door when it was knocked. It is jolly to be regarded as a wicked, libidinous youth by an aged maiden Aunt.

January 22.

This Diary reads for all the world as if I were not living in mighty London. The truth is I live in a bigger, dirtier city—ill-health. Ill-health, when chronic, is like a permanent ligature around one's life. What a fine fellow I'd be if I were perfectly well. My energy for one thing would lift the roof off....

We conversed around the text: "To travel hopefully is better than to arrive and true success is to labour." She is—well, so graceful. My God! I love her, I love her, I love her!!!

February 3.

A Confession

H—— B—— invited me to tea to meet his fiancée.

Rather pleased with the invitation—I don't know why, for my idea of myself is greater than my idea of him and probably greater than his idea of himself.

Yet I went and got shaved, and even thought of buying a new pair of gloves, but poverty proved greater than vanity, so I went with naked hands. On arriving at Turnham Green, I removed my spectacles (well knowing how much they damage my personal appearance). However, the beauty of the thing was that, tho' I waited as agreed, he never turned up, and so I returned home again, crestfallen—and, with my spectacles on again.

February 9.

... "Now, W——, talk to me prettily," she said as soon as the door was closed on them.

"Oh! make him read a book," whined her sister, but we talked of marriage instead—in all its aspects. Bless their hearts, I found these two dear young things simply sodden with the idea of it.

In the middle I did a knee-jerk which made them scream with laughing—the patellar reflex was new to them, so I seized a brush from the grate, crossed to Her and gently tapped: out shot her foot, and ----cried: "Oh, do do it to me as well." It was rare fun.

"Oh! pretty knee, what do I see? And he stooped and he tied up my garter for me."

February 10.

News of Scott's great adventure! Scott dead a year ago!! The news, when I saw it to-night in the Pall Mall Gazette gave me cold thrills. I could have wept.... What splendid people we humans are! If there be no loving God to watch us, it's a pity for His sake as much as for our own.

February 15.

Tried to kiss her in a taxi-cab on the way home from the Savoy—the taxi-cab danger is very present with us—but she rejected me quietly, sombrely. I apologised on the steps of the Flats and said I feared I had greatly annoyed her. "I'm not annoyed," she said, "only surprised"—in a thoughtful, chilly voice.

We had had supper in Soho, and I took some wine, and she looked so bewitching it sent me in a fever, thrumming my fingers on the seat of the cab while she sat beside me impassive. Her shoulders are exquisitely modelled and a beautiful head is carried poised on a tiny neck.

February 16.

Walking up the steps to her flat to-night made me pose to H—— (who was with me) as Sydney Carton in the picture in A Tale of Two Cities on the steps of the scaffold. He laughed boisterously, as he is delighted to know of my last evening's misadventure.

At supper, a story was told of a man who knocked at the door of his lady's heart four times and at last was admitted. I remarked that the last part of the romance was weak. She disagreed. H—— exclaimed, "Oh! but this man has no sentiment at all!"

"So much the worse for him," chimed in the others.

"He was 66 years of age," added Mrs.——.

"Too old," said P. "What do you think the best age for a man to marry?"

H.: "Thirty for a man, twenty-five for a woman."

She: "That's right: it still gives me a little time."

P.: "What do you think?" (to me).

I replied sardonically,—

"A young man may not yet and an old man not at all."

"That's right, old wet blanket," chirruped P——.

"You know," I continued, delighted to seize the opportunity to assume the role of youthful cynic, "Cupid and Death once met at an Inn and exchanged arrows, since when young men have died and old men have doted."

H—— was charming enough to opine that it was impossible to fix a time for love. Love simply came.

We warned him to be careful on the boat going out.

"Yes, I know," said H—— (who is in love with P——).

"My brother had a dose of moonlight on board a boat when he sailed and he's been happy ever since."

P.: "How romantic!"

H.: "A great passion!"

"The only difference," I interjected in a sombre monotone, "between a passion and a caprice is that the caprice lasts a little longer."

"Sounds like a book," She said in contempt.

It was—Oscar Wilde!

P—— insisted on my taking a biscuit. "Don't mind me," she said. "Just think I'm a waitress and take no notice at all."

H.: "Humph! I never see him taking no notice of a waitress."

(Sneers and Curtain.)

February 24.

H—— came home last night and told me that she said as he came away, "Tell W—— I hate him." So it's all right. I shall go over to-morrow again—Hurrah! My absence has been felt then.

March 7.

Came home, lay on my bed, still dressed, and ruminated....

First a suspicion then a conviction came to me that I was a cad—a callous, selfish, sensation-hunting cad.... For the time being the bottom was knocked out of my smug self-satisfaction. For several long half-hours I found myself drifting without compass or stars. I was quite disorientated, temporarily thrown off the balance of my amour propre. Then I got up, lit the gas and looking at myself in the mirror, found it was really true,—I was a mean creature, wholly absorbed in self.

As an act of contrition, I ought to have gone out into the garden and eaten worms. But the mirror brought back my self-consciousness and I began to crawl back into my recently discarded skin—I began to be less loathesome to myself. For as soon as I felt interested or amused or curious over the fact that I had been really loathesome to myself I began to regain my equilibrium. Now, I and myself are on comparatively easy terms with one another. I am settled on the old swivel.... I take a lot of knocking off it and if shot off soon return.

To-day, she was silent and melancholy but wonderfully fascinating. One day I am desperate and the next cold and apathetic. Am I in love? God knows! She came to the door to say "Good night," and I deliberately strangled my desire to say something.

March 9.

In bed till 12.30 reading Bergson and the O.T.

Over to the flat to supper. E—— was cold and silent. She spurned me. No wonder. I talked volubly and quite brilliantly with the definite purpose of showing up J——'s somnolence. I also pulled his leg. He hates me. No wonder. After supper, he went in to her studio and remained there alone with her while she worked. At 11 p.m. he was still there when I came away in a whirlwind of jealousy, regrets, and rage. G—— said he was going to stay on until he saw "the blighter off the premises." Neither of us would go in to turn him out.

I love her deeply and once my heart jumped when I thought I heard her coming into the room. But it was only P——. Did not see her again—even to say "Good-night."

March 10.

Work in the evening in our bedroom—two poor miserable bachelors—H—— reading Equity Law, a rug around his legs before an empty grate, while I am sitting at the table in top-coat, with collar up, and writing my magnum opus, which is to bring me fame, fortune and—E——!

H—— says that this morning I was putting on my shoes when he pointed out a large hole in the heel of my sock.

"Damn! I shall have to wear boots," I said—at least he says I said it, and I am quite ready to believe him. Such unconsciousness of self is rare with me.

March 15.

[At a public dinner at the Holborn Restaurant] J——replied to the toast of the Ladies. Feeble! H—— and I stood and had a silent toast to E—— and N—— by just winking one eye at each other. He sat opposite me.

If I had been asked to reply to this toast I should have said with the greatest gusto, something as follows,—

[Here follows the imaginary speech in full, composed the same night before going to sleep.]

Yet I am taken for a soft fool! My manner is soft, self-conscious, shy. What a lot of self-glorification I lose thereby! What a lot of self-torture I gain in its stead!

March 17.

To-day went to the B.M. but did very little work. Thought over the matter carefully and decided to ask E—— to marry me. Relief to be able to decide. I was happy too.

Yesterday P—— came in to us from E——'s studio and said,—

"E—— sends her love."

"To whom?" H—— inquired.

"I don't know," P—— replied, smiling at me.

March 18.

Had a long conversation with H—— last night. He says all E—— intended to convey was that the quarrel was over.... I felt relieved, because I have no money, but—a large ambition. Then I am selfish, and have not forgotten that I want to spend my holidays in the Jura, and next year three weeks at the Plymouth Laboratory.

March 19.

Went over to see E——. We had an awkward half-an-hour alone together. She was looking bewitching! I am plunging more and more into love. Had it on the tip of my tongue once. I am dreadfully fond of her.

"I have a most profound gloom over me," I said.

"Why don't you try and get rid of it?" she asked.

"I can't until Zeus has pity and rolls away the clouds."

April 21.

We are sitting up in our beds which are side by side in a room on the top story of a boarding house in —— Road.

It is 11.30 p.m. and I am leaning over one one side lighting the oil lamp so as to boil the kettle to make Ovaltine before going to sleep.

"Whom have I seduced?" I screamed. "You rotter, don't you know that a dead passion full of regrets is as terrible as a dead body full of worms? There, I talk literature, my boy, if you were only Boswell enough to take it down.... As for K——, I shall never invite him to dinner again. He comes to me and whines that nobody loves him, and so I say, 'Oh! poor lad, never mind, if you're bored, why, come to my rooms of an evening and hear me talk—you'll have the time of your life.' And now he's cheeky."

H. (sipping his drink and very much preoccupied with it) replied abstractedly, "When you die you'll go to Hell." (I liked his Homeric simplicity.) "You ought to be buried in a fireproof safe."

Silence.

H. (returning to the attack), "I hope she turns you down."

"Thank you," I said.

"As for P——," he resumed, "she's double-Dutch to me."

"Go to the Berlitz School," I suggested, "and learn the language."

"You bally fool.... All you do is to sit there and smile like a sanguinary cat. Nothing I say ever rouses you. I believe if I came to you and said, 'Here, Professor, is a Beetle with 99 legs that has lived on granite in the middle of the Sahara for 40 days and 40 nights,' you'd simply answer, 'Yes, and that reminds me I've forgotten to blow my nose.'"

The two pyjamaed figures shake with laughing, the light goes out and the sanguinary conversation continues on similar lines until we fall asleep.

April 26.

Two Months' Sick Leave

In a horrible panic—the last few days—I believe I am developing locomotor ataxy. One leg, one arm, and my speech are affected, i.e. the right side and my speech centre. M—— is serious.... I hope the disease, whatever it is, will be sufficiently lingering to enable me to complete my book.

R—— is a dear man. I shall not easily forget his kindness during this terrible week.... Can the Fates have the audacity?... Who can say?

April 27.

I believe there can be no doubt that I have had a slight partial paralysis of my right side (like Dad). I stutter a little in my speech when excited, I cannot write properly (look at this handwriting), and my right leg is rocky at the knee. My head swims.

It is too inconceivably horrible to be buried in the Earth in such splendid spring weather. Who can tell me what is in store for me?... Life opens to me, I catch a glimpse of a vision, and the doors clang to again noiselessly. It is dark. That will be my history. Am developing a passionate belief in my book and a fever of haste to complete it before the congé définitif.

April 29.

Saw M—— again, who said my symptoms were alarming certainly, but he was sure no definite diagnosis could be made.

April 30.

Went with M—— to see a well-known nerve specialist—Dr. H——. He could find no symptoms of a definite disease, tho' he asked me suspiciously if I had ever been with women.

Ordered two months' complete rest in the country. H—— chased me round his consulting room with a drum-stick, tapping my nerves and cunningly working my reflexes. Then he tickled the soles of my feet and pricked me with a pin—all of which I stood like a man. He wears a soft black hat, looks like a Quaker, and reads the Verhandlungen d. Gesellschaft d. Nervenarzten.

M—— is religious and after I had disclosed my physique to him yesterday (for the 99th time) he remained on his knees by the couch in his consulting room (after working my reflexes) for a moment or two in the attitude of prayer. When the Doctor prays for you—better call in the undertaker. My epitaph "He played Ludo well." The game anyhow requires moral stamina—ask H——.

May 5.

At R——. Mugged about all day. Put on a gramophone record—then crawled up into a corner of the large, empty drawing room and ate my heart out. Heart has a bitter taste—if it's your own.

May 6.

Sat in the "morning room" feeling ill. In the chair opposite sat Aunt Fanny, aged 86, knitting. I listened to the click of her needles, while out in the garden a thrush sang, and there was a red sunset.

May 8.

Before I left R——, A—— [My brother] had written to Uncle enclosing my doctor's letter. I don't know the details except that Dr. M—— emphasised the seriousness and yet held out hope that two months' rest would allay the symptoms.

May 11.

At Home

I made some offensive remark to H—— whom I met in the street. This set him off.

"You blighter, I hope you marry a loose woman. May your children be all bandy-legged and squint-eyed, may your teeth drop out, and your toes have bunions," and so on in his usual lengthy commination.

I turned to the third man.

"Bob—this!—after all I've done for that young man! I have even gone out of my Way to cultivate in him a taste for poetry—until he is now, in fact, quite wrapped up in it—indeed, so much so, that for a time he was nothing but a brown paper parcel labelled Poetry."

H. (doggedly): "When are you going to die?"

"That Master H——," I answered menacingly, "is on the knees of the Gods."

H.: "I shan't believe you're dead till I see your tombstone. I shall then say to the Sexton, 'Is he really dead, then?' and the Sexton will say, 'Well, 'ee's buried onny way.'"

Bob was not quite in sympathy with our boisterous spirits.

May 15.

Gardening

Sought out H—— as he was watering his petunias in the garden. He informed me he was going to London on Monday.

H.: "Mother is coming too."

B.: "Why?"

H.: "Oh! I'm buying my kit—shirts and things. I sail at the beginning of July."

B.: "I suppose shirts are difficult to buy. You wouldn't know what to do with one if you had one. Your mother will lead you by the hand into a shop and say, 'H——, dear, this is a shirt,' and you'll reply with pathos, 'Mother what are the wild shirts saying?'"

H.: "You're a B.F." (goes on watering).

"I wonder what you'd do if you were let loose in a big garden," I began.

H.: "I should be as happy as a bird. I should hop about, chirrup and lay eggs. You should have seen my tomato plants last year—one was as tall as father."

B.: "Now tell me of the Gooseberry as big as Mother."

Mutual execrations. Then we grinned and cackled at each other, emitting weird and ferocious cachinnations. Several times a day in confidential, serious tones—after one of these explosions—we say, "I really believe we're mad." You never heard such extraordinary caterwaulings. Our snappy conversations are interrupted with them every minute or so!

Stagnancy

A stagnant day. Lay still in the Park all day with just sufficient energy to observe. The Park was almost empty. Every one but me at work. Nothing is more dreary than a pleasure ground on workdays. There was one man a little way off throwing a ball to a clever dog. Behind me on the path, some one came along wheeling a pram. I listened in a kind of coma to the scrunching of the gravel in the distance a long time after the pram was out of sight. Far away—the tinkle of Church bells in a village across the river, and, in front, the man still throwing the ball to his clever dog.

May 25.

Death

... I suppose the truth is I am at last broken to the idea of Death. Once it terrified me and once I hated it. But now it only annoys me. Having lived with the Bogey for so long, and broken bread with him so often, I am used to his ugliness, tho' his persistent attentions bore me. Why doesn't he do it and have done with me? Why this deference, why does he pass me everything but the poison? Why am I such an unconscionably long time dying?

What embitters me is the humiliation of having to die, to have to be pouring out the precious juices of my life into the dull Earth, to be no longer conscious of what goes on, no longer moving abroad upon the Earth creating attraction and repulsions, pouring out one's ego in a stream. To think that the women I have loved will be marrying and forget, and that the men I have hated will continue on their way and forget I ever hated them—the ignominy of being dead! What voluble talker likes his mouth to be stopped with earth, who relishes the idea of the carrion worm mining in the seat of the intellect?

May 29.

Renunciation

Staying at the King's Hotel, ——. Giddiness very bad. Death seems unavoidable. A tumour on the brain?

Coming down here in the train, sat in corner of the compartment, twined one leg around the other, rested my elbow on the window ledge, and gazed out helplessly at the exuberant green fields, green woods, and green hedgerows. The weather was perfect, the sun blazed down.

Certainly, I was rather sorry for myself at the thought of leaving it all. But I girded up my loins and wrapped around me for a while the mantle of a nobler sentiment; i.e. I felt sorry for the others as well—for the two brown carters in the road ambling along with a timber waggon, for the two old maids in the same compartment with me knitting bedsocks, for the beautiful Swallows darting over the stream, for the rabbit that lopped into the fern just as we passed—they too were all leaving it.

The extent of my benign compassion startled me—it was so unexpected. Perhaps for the first time in my life I forgot all about my own miserable ambitions—I forgave the successful, the time-servers, the self-satisfied, the overweening, the gracious and condescending—all, in fact, who hitherto have been thorns in my flesh and innocently enough have goaded me to still fiercer efforts to win thro'. "Poor people," I said. "Leave them alone. Let them be happy if they can." With a submissive heart, I was ready to sit down in the rows of this world's failures and never have thought one bitter word about success. To all those persons who in one way or another had foiled my purposes I extended a pardon with Olympian gravity, and, strangest of all, I could have melted such frosty moral rectitudes with a genuine interest in the careers of my struggling contemporaries. With perfect self-abnegation, I held out my hand to them and wished them all "God Speed."

It was a strange metempsychosis. Yet of a truth it is no use being niggardly over our lives. We are all of us "shelling out." And we can afford to be generous, for we shall all—some early, some late—be bankrupt in the end. For my part, I've had a short and boisterous voyage and shan't be sorry to get into port. I give up all my plans, all my hopes, all my loves and enthusiasms without remonstrance. I renounce all—I myself am already really dead.

May 30.

Last night the sea was as flat as a pavement, a pretty barque with all her sails out to catch the smallest puff of wind—the tiniest inspiration—was nevertheless without motion—a painted ship on a tapestry of violet. H—— Hill was an immense angular mass of indigo blue. Even rowing boats made little progress and the water came off the languid paddles in syrupy clots. Everything was utterly still, the air thick—like cottonwool to the touch and very stifling; vitality in living things leaked away under a sensuous lotus influence. Intermittently after the darkness had come, Bullpoint Lighthouse shone like the wink of a lascivious eye.

Pottering about all day on the Pier and Front, listening to other people's talk, catching snippets of conversation—not edifying. If there were seven wise men in the town, I would not save it. Damn the place!

May 31.

... I espied her first in the distance and turned my head away quickly and looked out to sea. A moment after, I began to turn my head round again slowly with the cautiousness and air of suspicion of a Tortoise poking its head out from underneath his shell. I was terrified to discover that in the meantime she had come and sat down on the seat immediately behind me with her back to mine. We sat like this back to back for some time and I enjoyed the novel experience and the tension. A few years ago, the bare sight of her gave me palpitation of the heart, and, on the first occasion that I had the courage to stop to speak, I felt livid and the skin on my face twitched uncontrollably.

Presently I got up and walked past—in the knowledge that she must now be conscious of my presence after a disappearance of three years. Later we met face to face and I broke the ice. She's a pretty girl.... So too is her sister.

Few people, except my barber, know how amorous I am. He has to shave my sinuous lips.

June 3.

Spent many dreadful hours cogitating whether to accept their invitation to dinner.... I wanted to go for several reasons. I wanted to see her in a home-setting for the first time, and I wanted to spend the evening with three pretty girls. I also had the idea of displaying myself to the scrutinising gaze of the family as the hero of the old romance: and of showing Her how much I had progressed since last we met and what a treasure she had lost.

On the other hand, I was afraid that the invitation was only a casual one, I feared a snuffy reception, a frosty smile and a rigid hand. Could I go up and partake of meat at their board, among brothers and sisters taking me for an ogre of a jilt, and she herself perhaps opposite me making me blush perpetually to recall our one-time passionate kisses, our love letters and our execrable verses to each other! There seemed dreadful possibilities in such an adventure. Yet I badly wanted to experience the piquant situation.

At 7 p.m., half an hour before I was due, decided on strong measures. I entered a pub and took a stiff whisky and soda, and then set off with a stout heart to take the icy family by storm—and if need be live down my evil reputation by my amiability and urbanity!

I went—and of course everything passed off in the most normal manner. She is a very pretty girl—like velvet. Before dinner, we walked in the garden—and talked only of flowers.

June 4.

On the Hill, this morning, felt the thrill of the news of my own Death: I mean I imagined I heard the words,—

"You've heard the news about B——?"

Second Voice: "No, what?"

"He's dead."

Silence.

Won't all this seem piffle if I don't die after all! As an artist in life I ought to die; it is the only artistic ending —and I ought to die now or the Third Act will fizzle out in a long doctor's bill.

June 5.

A New Pile in the Pier

Watched some men put a new pile in the pier. There was all the usual paraphernalia of chains, pulleys, cranes, and ropes, with a massive wooden pile swinging over the water at the end of a long wire hawser. Everything was in the massive style—even the men—very powerful men, slow, ruminative, silent men.

Nothing very relevant could be gathered from casual remarks. The conversation was without exception monosyllabic: "Let go," or "Stand fast." But by close attention to certain obscure movements of the man on the ladder near the water's edge, it gradually came thro' to my consciousness that all these powerful, silent men were up against some bitter difficulty. I cannot say what it was. The burly monsters were silent about the matter.... In fact they appeared almost indifferent—and tired, oh! so very tired of the whole business. The attitude of the man nearest me was that for all he cared the pile could go on swinging in mid-air to the crack of Doom.

They continued slow, laborious efforts to overcome the secret difficulty. But these gradually slackened and finally ceased. One massive man after another abandoned his post in order to lean over the rails and gaze like a mystic into the depths of the sea. No one spoke. No one saw anything not even in the depths of the sea. One spat, and with round, sad eyes contemplated the trajectory of his brown bolus (he had been chewing) in its descent into the water.

The foreman, an original thinker, lit a cigarette, which relieved the tension. Then, slowly and with majesty, he turned on his heel, and walked away. With the sudden eclipse of the foreman's interest, the incident closed. I should have been scarcely surprised to find him behind the Harbour-master's Office playing "Shove-ha'penny" or skittles with the pile still swinging in mid-air.... After all it was only a bloody pile.

June 11.

Depression

Suffering from depression.... The melancholy fit fell very suddenly. All the colour went out of my life, the world was dirty gray. On the way back to my hotel caught sight of H——, jumping into a cab, after a visit to S—— Sands. But the sight of him aroused no desire in me to shout or wave. I merely wondered how on earth he could have spent a happy day at such a Sandy place.

On arriving at ——, sank deeper into my morass. It suffocated me to find the old familiar landmarks coming into view ... the holiday-makers along the streets how I hated them—the Peg Top Hill how desolate—all as before—how dull. The very fact that they were all there as before in the morning nauseated me. The sea-coast here is magnificent, the town is pretty—I know that, of course. But all looked dreary and cheerless—just the sort of feeling one gets on entering an empty house with no fire on a winter's day and nowhere to sit down.... I felt as lonely and desolate as a man suddenly fallen from the clouds into an unknown town on the Antarctic Continent built of ice and inhabited by Penguins. Who are these people? I asked myself irritably. There perhaps on the other side of the street was my own brother. But I was not even faintly interested and told the cabman to drive on. The spray from the sea fogged my spectacles and made me weary.

June 14.

The Restlessness of the Sea

The restlessness of the sea acts as a soporific on jangled nerves. You gaze at its incessant activities, unwillingly at first because they distract your attention from your own cherished worries and griefs,—but later you watch with complete self-abandon—it wrenches you out of yourself—and eventually with a kind of stupid hypnotic stare.

Dr. Spurgeon

The day has been overcast, but to-night a soft breeze sprang up and swept the sky clear as softly as a mop. The sun coming out shone upon a white sail far out in the channel, scarcely another vessel hove in sight. The white sail glittered like a piece of silver paper whenever the mainsail swung round as the vessel tacked. Its solitariness and whiteness in a desert of marine blue attracted the attention and held it till at last I could look at nothing else. The sight of it—so clean and white and fair—set me yearning for all the rarest and most exquisite things my imagination could conjure up—a beautiful girl, with fair and sunburnt skin, brown eyes, dark eyebrows, and small pretty feet; a dewdrop in a violet's face; an orange-tip butterfly swinging on an umbel of a flower.

The sail went on twinkling and began to exert an almost moral influence over me. It drew out all the good in me. I longed to follow it on white wings—an angel I suppose—to quit this husk of a body "as raiment put away," and pursue Truth and Beauty across the sea to the horizon, and beyond the horizon up the sky itself to its last tenuous confines, no doubt with a still small voice summoning me and the rest of the elect to an Agapemone, with Dr. Spurgeon at the door distributing tracts.

I can scoff like this now. But at the time my exaltation was very real. My soul strained in the leash. I was full of a desire for unattainable spiritual beauty. I wanted something. But I don't know what I want.

June 16.

My Sense of Touch

My sense of touch has always been morbidly acute. I like to feel a cigarette locked in the extreme corner of my mouth. When I remove it from my mouth then I hold it probably up in the fork between two fingers. If I am waiting for a meal I finger the cool knives and forks. If I am in the country I plunge my hands with outspread fingers into a mass of large-topped grasses, then close my fingers, crush and decapitate the lot.

June 27.

Camping Out at S—— Sands

A brilliant summer day. Up early, breakfasted, and, clad in sweater and trousers, walked up the sands to the boathouse with bare feet.

Everything was wonderful! I strode along over the level sands infatuated with the sheer ability to put one leg in front of the other and walk. I loved to feel the muscles of my thighs working, and to swing my arms in rhythm with the stride. The stiff breeze had blown the sky clear, and was rushing through my long hair, and bellowing into each ear. I strode as Alexander must have done!

Then I stretched my whole length out along a flat plank on the sands, which was as dry as a bone and warm. There was not a soul on the sands. Everything was bare, clean, windswept. My plank had been washed clean and white. The sands—3 miles of it—were hard and purified, level. My eye raced along in every direction—there was nothing—not a bird or a man—to stop it. In that immense windswept space nothing was present save me and the wind and the sea—a flattering moment for the egotist.

At the foot of the cliffs on the return journey met an old man gathering sticks. As he ambled along dropping sticks into a long sack he called out casually, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" in the tone of voice in which one would say, "I think we shall have some rain before night." "Aye, aye," came the answer without hesitation from a boy lying on his back in the sands a few yards distant, "and that He died to save me."

Life is full of surprises like this. The only other sounds I have heard to-day were the Herring Gull's cackle. Your own gardener will one day look over his rake and give you the correct chemical formula for carbonic acid gas. I met a postman once reading Shelley as he walked his rounds.

June 28.

I am writing this by the lamp in the cabin among the sandhills waiting for H—— to arrive from town with provisions. I wear a pair of bags, a dirty sweater, and go without hat or shoes and stockings. There is a "Deadwood Dick" atmosphere here. I'm a sort of bronco-breaker or rancher off duty writing home. In a minute I haven't the slightest doubt, H—— will gallop into the compound, tether his colt and come in "raising Cain" for a belly-full of red meat.... If I am going to live after all (touch wood) I shall go abroad and be in the open.

I eat greedily, am getting very sunburnt, am growing hairy (that means strength!), and utter portentous oaths. If I stayed here much longer I should grow a tail and climb trees.

After a supper of fried eggs and fried bread done to a nicety, turned in at ten, and both of us lay warm and comfortable in bed, smoking cigarettes and listening to Hoffmann's Barcarolle on the gramophone. We put the lamp out, and it pleased us to watch the glow of each other's cigarettes in the dark.... Neither of us spoke.... Went to sleep at midnight. Awoke at sunrise to hear an Owl still hooting, a Lark singing, and several Jackdaws clattering on our tin roof with their claws as they walked.

July 1.

In London Again

Returned to London very depressed. Am not so well as I was three weeks ago. The sight of one eye is affected, and I am haunted by the possibility of blindness. Then I have a numb feeling on one side of my face, and my right arm is less mobile.

Left darling Mother in a very weak state in bed, with neuritis and a weak heart. She cried when I said "Goodbye," and asked me to go to Church as often as I could, and to read a portion of Scripture every day. I promised. Then she added, "For Dad's sake;" just as if I would not do it for her. Poor dear, she suffers a deal of pain. She does not know how ill I am. I have not told her.

July 3.

Back at work. A terrible day. Thoughts of suicide—a pistol.

July 8.

I get thro' each day with the utmost difficulty. I have to wrestle with every minute. Each hour is a conquest. The three quarters of an hour at lunch comes as a Godsend. I look forward to it all the morning, I enter into it with joyful relief with no thought of the dreadful moment impending when I must return and re-enter my room. By being wise like this, I manage to husband my spirits and am relatively cheerful for one hour in the middle of each difficult day.

July 9.

Several times I have gone to bed and hoped I should never wake up. Life grows daily more impossible. To-day I put a slide underneath the microscope and looked at it. It was like looking at something thro' the wrong end of a telescope. I sat with eye glued to the ocular, so as to keep up a pretence of work in case some one came in. My mind was occupied with quite different affairs. If one is pondering on Life and Death, it is a terrible task to have to study Mites.

July 10.

Am doing no work at all.... I sit motionless in my chair and beat the devil's tattoo with my thumbs and think, think, think in the same horrible circle hour after hour. I am unable to work. I haven't the courage to. I've lost my nerve.

At five I return "home" to the Boarding-house and get more desperate.

Two old maids sat down to dinner to-night, one German youth (a lascivious, ranting, brainless creature), a lady typist (who takes drugs they say), a dipsomaniac (who has monthly bouts—H—— carried him upstairs and put him to bed the other night), two invertebrate violinists who play in the Covent Garden Orchestra, a colonial lady engaged in a bedroom intrigue with a man who sits at my table. What are these people to me? I hate them all. They know it and are offended.

After dinner, put on my cap and rushed out anywhere to escape. Walked to the end of the street, not knowing where I was going or what doing. Stopped and stared with fixed eyes at the traffic in Kensington Road, undetermined what to do with myself and unable to make up my mind (volitional paralysis). Turned round, walked home, and went straight to bed 9 p.m., anxiously looking forward to to-morrow evening when I go to see her again, but at the same time wondering how on earth I am to get through to-morrow's round before the evening comes.... This is a hand-to-mouth existence. My own inner life is scorching up all outside interests. Zoology appears as a curious thing in a Bagdad bazaar. I sit in my room at the B.M. and play with it; I let it trickle thro' my fingers and roll away like a child playing with quicksilver.

July 11.

Over to the flat. She was looking beautiful in a black dress, with a white silk blouse, and a Byron collar, negligently open in front as if a button had come out. She said I varied: sometimes I went up in her estimation, sometimes down; once I went down very low. I understood her to say I was now UP! Alleluia!

July 14.

... It would take too long and I am too tired to write out all the varying phases of this day's life—all its impressions and petty miseries chasing one another across my consciousness or leap-frogging over my chest like gleeful fiends.[1]

July 21.

Thoroughly enjoyed the journey up to town this morning. I secretly gloated over the fact that the train was dashing along over the rails to London bearing me and all the rest of the train's company upon their pursuits—wealth, fame, learning. I was inebriated with the speed, ferocity, and dash of living.... If the train had charged into the buffers I should have hung my head out of the window and cheered. If a man had got in my way, I'd have knocked him down. The wheels of the carriage were singing a lusty song in which I joined.

July 30.

... We talked of men and women, and she said she thought men were neither angels nor devils but just men. I said I thought women were either angels or devils.

"I am afraid to ask you which you think me."

"You needn't," I said shortly.

August 9.

Horribly upset with news from home. Mother is really ill. The Doctor fears serious nerve trouble and says she will always be an invalid. This is awful, poor dear! It's dreadful, and yet I have a tiny wish buried at the bottom of my heart that she may be removed early from us rather than linger in pain of body and mind. Especially do I hope she may not live to hear any grievous news of me.... What irony that she should lose the use of her right arm only two years after Dad's death from paralysis. It is cruel for it reminds her of Dad's illness.... What, too, would she think if she could have heard M——'s first words to me yesterday on one of my periodical visits to his consulting room, "Well, how's the paralysis?"

In the evening went over to see her. She was wearing a black silk gown and looked handsome.... She is always the same sombre, fascinating, lissom, soft-voiced She! She herself never changes.... What am I to do? I cannot give her up and yet I do not altogether wish to take her to my heart. It distresses me to know how to proceed. I am a wily fish.

August 10.

Sat in the gardens with her. We sat facing the sun for a while until she was afraid of developing freckles and turned around, deliberately turning her back on good King Sol.... I said it was disrespectful.

"Oh! he doesn't mind," she said. "He's a dear. He kissed me and said, 'Turn round my dear if you like.'"

Isn't she tantalising?

I wanted to say sarcastically, "I wonder you let him kiss you," but there was a danger of the remark reviving the dead.

August 14.

I tried my best, I've sought every loophole of escape, but I am quite unable to avoid the melancholy fact that her thumbs are—lamentable. I am genuinely upset about it for I like her. No one more than I would be more delighted if they were otherwise.... Poor dear! how I love her! That's why I'm so concerned about her thumbs.

August 21.

A wire from A—— came at 11.50 saying "Darling Mother passed peacefully away yesterday afternoon." ... Yesterday afternoon I was writing Zoology and all last night I slept soundly.... It was quite sudden. Caught the first train home.

August 23.

The funeral.

August 31.

Staying at the Hotel du Guesclin at Cancale near St. Malo with my dear A——.

This flood of new experiences has knocked my diary habit out of gear. To be candid, I've forgotten all about myself. I've been too engrossed in living to stand the strain of setting down and in cold blood writing out all the things seen and heard. If I once began I should blow thro' these pages like a whirlwind.... But what a waste of time with M. le batelier waiting outside with his bisque to take us mackerel fishing!...

September 8.

Returned to Southampton yesterday. Have spent the night at Okehampton in Devonshire en route for T—— Rectory. This morning we hatched the ridiculous idea of hiring two little Dartmoor ponies and riding out from the town. A—— rides fairly well tho' he has not been astride a beast for years. As for me, I cannot ride at all! Yet I had the idea that I could easily manage a pretty little pony with brown eyes and a long tail. On going out into the Inn yard, was horrified—two horses saddled—one a large traction beast.... I climbed on to the smaller one, walked him out of the yard and down the road in good style without accident. Once in the country, however, my animal, the fresher of the two, insisted on a smart trot which shook me up a good deal so that I hardly kept my seat. This eventually so annoyed the animal that it began to fidget and zigzag across the road—no doubt preparing to break away at a stretch gallop when once it had rid itself of the incomprehensible pair of legs across its back.

I got off quickly and swopped horses with A——.

Walked him most of the way, while A—— cantered forward and back to cheer me on. Ultimately however this beast, too, got sick of walking and began to trot. For a time I stood this well and began to rise in my saddle quite nicely. After two miles, horrible soreness supervened, and I had to get off—very carefully, with a funny feeling in my legs—even looked down at them to assure myself they were not bandy! In doing so, the horse—this traction monster—stepped on my toe and I swore.

On nearing the village, L—— arrived, riding A——'s animal and holding his sides for laughing at me as I crawled along holding the carthorse by the bridle. Got on again and rode into the Rectory grounds in fine style like a dashing cavalier, every one jeering at me from the lawn.

September 28.

Having lived on this planet now for the space of 24 years, I can claim with some cogency that I am qualified to express some sort of opinion about it. I therefore hereby record that I find myself in an absorbingly interesting place where I live, move and have my being, dominated by one monstrous feature above all others—the mystery of it all! Everything is so astonishing, my own existence so incredible!

Nothing explains itself. Every one is dumb. It is like walking about at a masqued Ball.... Even I myself am a mystery to me. How wonderful and frightening that is—to feel yourself—your innermost and most substantial possession to be a mystery, incomprehensible. I look at myself in the mirror and mock at myself. On some days I am to myself as strange and unfamiliar as a Pterodactyl. There is a certain grim humour in finding myself here possessed of a perfectly arbitrary arrangement of lineaments when I never asked to be here and never selected my own attributes. To the dignity of a human being it seems like a coarse practical joke.... My own freakish physique is certainly a joke.

October 4.

In London Again

K—— comes in from her dancing class, nods to me, hugs her sister around the neck and says,—

"Oh! you dear thing, you've got a cold."

"I shouldn't do that," I remark, green-eyed, "she's in an awful wax to-night."

She: "Oh! I don't mind K——!"

(Laughter!)

October 8.

Heard a knock at the door last night, and, thinking it was R——, I unbolted it and let in a tramp who at once asked God to bless me and crown all my sorrow with joy. An amiable fellow to be sure—so I gave him some coppers and he at once repeated with wonderful fervour, "God bless you, sir."

"I wish He would," I answered, "I have a horrible cold."

"Ah, I know, I gets it myself and the hinfluenza—have you had that, sir?"

In ten minutes I should have told him all my personal history. But he was thirsting for a drink and went off quickly and left me with my heart unburthened. London is a lonely place.

To-day journeyed to —— where I gave evidence as an expert in Economic Entomology at the County Court in a case concerning damage to furniture by mites for which I am paid £8 8s. fee and expenses and travelled first class. What irony! (See June 30, 1911.)

October 11.

I may be a weak, maundering, vacillating fool but I cannot help loving her on one day, being indifferent the next and on some occasions even disliking her.... To-day she was charming, with a certain warm glossy perfection on her face and hair.... And she loves me—I could swear it. "And when a woman woos ..." etc. How difficult for a vain and lonely man to resist her. She tells me many times in many dainty ways that she loves me without so much as stopping her work to talk.

I wish I were permanently and irresistibly enamoured. I want a bouleversement....

October 13.

Went to see a Harley Street oculist about the sight of one eye, which has caused a lot of trouble and worry of late and continuously haunted me with the possibility of blindness. At times, I see men as trees walking and print becomes hopelessly blurred.

The Specialist however is reassuring. The eye is healthy —no neuritis—but the adjustment muscles have been thrown out of gear by the nervous troubles of last spring.

Was ever man more sorely tempted? Here am I lonely and uncomfortable in diggings with a heart like nascent oxygen.... Shall I? Yes, but.... And I have neither health nor wealth.

October 22.

The British Museum Reading Room

I saw it for the first time to-day! Gadzooks!! This is the only fit ejaculation to express my amazement! It's a pagan temple with the Gods in the middle and all around, various obscure dark figures prostrating themselves in worship.

For any one who is not simply a Sheep or Cow or whose nervous organisation is a degree more sensitive than the village blacksmith's, it is a besetting peril to his peace of mind to be constantly moving about an independent being, with loves and hates, and a separate identity among other separate identities, who prowl and prowl around like the hosts of Midian—ready to snarl, fight, seize you, bore you, exasperate you, to arouse all your passions, call up all the worst from the depths where they have lain hidden.... A day spent among my fellows goads me to a frenzy by the evening. I am no longer fit for human companionship. People string me up to concert pitch. I develop suspicions of one that he is prying, of another that he patronises. Others make me horribly anxious to stand well in their eyes and horribly curious to know what they think of me. Others I hate and loathe—for no particular reason. There is a man I am acquainted with concerning whom I know nothing at all. He may be Jew, Gentile, Socinian, Pre-adamite, Anabaptist, Rosicrucian—I don't know, and I don't care, for I hate him. I should like to smash his face in. I don't know why.... In the whole course of our tenuous acquaintance we have spoken scarce a dozen words to each other. Yet I should like to blow up his face with dynamite. If I had £200 a year private income I should be in wait for him to-morrow round a corner and land him one—just to indicate my economic independence. He would call for the police and the policeman—discerning creature—on arrival, would surely say, "With a face like that, I'm not surprised."

R—— said to me this morning, "Well, have you heard?" with an exuberance of curiosity that made my blood boil—he was referring to my Essay still at the bar of the opinion of the Editor of the English Review. "You beast," I snapped and walked off.

R—— shouted with laughter for he realizes my anger with him is only semi-serious: it is meant and not meant: meant, for it is justified by the facts; not meant, for I can't be too serious over anything au fond.

Of all the grim and ridiculous odds and ends of chance that Fortune has rolled up to my feet, my friendship with a man like B—— is the grimmest and most ridiculous. He is a bachelor of sixty, rather good-looking, of powerful physique and a faultless constitution.... His ignorance is colossal and he once asked whether Australia, for example, tho' surrounded by water, is not connected up with other land underneath the sea. Being himself a child in intelligence (tho' commercially cunning), he has a great respect for my brains. Being himself a strong man, he views my ill-health with much contempt. His private opinion is that I am in consumption. When asked once by a lady if I were not going to be "a great man" one day, he replied, "Yes—if he lives." I ought to walk six miles a day, drink a bottle of stout with my dinner, and eat plenty of onions. His belief in the curative properties of onions is strong as death....

His system of prophylaxis may be quickly summarised,—

(1) Hot whisky ad lib. and off to bed.

(2) A woman.

These two sterling preventives he has often urged upon me at the same time tipping out a quantity of anathemas on doctors and physic....

He is a cynic. He scoffs at the medical profession, the Law, the Church, the Press. Every man is guilty until he is proved innocent. The Premier is an unscrupulous character, the Bishop a salacious humbug. No doctor will cure, for it pays him to keep you ill. Every clergyman puts the Sunday-school teacher in the family way. His mouth is permanently distorted by cynicism.

He is vain and believes all women are in love with him. When playing the Gallant, he turns on a special voice, wears white spats, and looks like a Newmarket "Crook."

"I lost my 'bus," a girl says to him. "Lost your bust," he answers, in broad Scotch. "I can't see that you've done that." ... His sexual career has been a remarkable one, he claiming to have brought many women to bed, and actually to have lain with women of almost all European nationalities, for he has been a great traveller....

This man is my devoted friend!... And truth to tell I get on with him better than I do with most people. I like his gamey flavour, his utter absence of self-consciousness, and his doggy loyalty to myself—his weaker brother. He may be depraved in his habits, coarse in his language, boorish in his manners, ludicrous in the wrongness of all his views. But I like him just because he is so hopeless. I get on with him because it is so impossible to reclaim him—my missionary spirit is not intrigued. If he only dabbled in vice (for an experiment), if he had pale, watery ideas about current literature—if—to use his own favourite epithet—he were genteel, I should quarrel.

October 30.

Having developed a passion for a piece of sculpture by R. Boeltzig called the Reifenwerferin—the most beautiful figure of a woman. I am already devoted to Rodin's "Kiss" and have a photo of it framed in my bedroom. Have written to Bruciani's.

I suspect that my growing appreciation of the plastic art is with me only distilled sensuality. I enjoy my morning bath for the same reason. My bath is a daily baptism. I revel in the pleasure of the pain of the cold water. I whistle gleefully because I am clean and cool and nude early in the morning with the sun still low, before the day has been stained by clothes, dirt, pain, exasperation, death.... How I love myself as I rub myself down!—the cool, pink skin—I could eat it! I want to be all day in a cold bath to enjoy the pain of mortifying the flesh—it is so beautiful, so soft, so inscrutable—if I cut out chunks of it, it would only bleed.

November 8.

The other morning R—— said hyperbolically that he hadn't slept all night for fear that, before he had time to put an arresting hand on my shoulder and say "Don't," I might have gone and become "Entangled." ...

... No, I'm as firm as a rock, my dear. But in imagination the affair was continued as follows,—

She: "I am fond of you, you know."

He: "I wish you wouldn't say these things to me—they're quite embarrassing."

She: "Oh! my dear, I'm not serious, you know—you're such a vain young man."

He: "Well, it's equally embarrassing any way."

She: "Then I am serious."

Tears.

I say: "I wish you would take me only for what I am—a blackguard with no good intentions, yet no very evil ones—but still a blackguard, whom you seem to find has engaging manners."

I breathe freely hoping to have escaped this terrible temptation and turn to go. But she, looking up smiling thro' a curtain of wet eyelashes, asks,—

"Won't the blackguard stop a little longer?" In a moment my earth works, redoubts, and bastions fall down, I rush forward impetuously into her arms shouting, "I will, I will, I will as long as for eternity."

(Curtain.)

I dramatised this little picture and much more last night before going to sleep when I was in a fever. I should succumb at once to the first really skilful coquette.

November 9.

Ludo

We played Ludo together this evening and she won 2s. 6d. Handsomely gowned in black and wearing black ornaments, she sat with me in the lamplight on the sofa in the Morris Room, with the Ludo board between us placed on a large green cushion. Her face was white as parchment and her hair seemed an ebony black. I lolled in the opposite corner, a thin, elongated youth, with fair hair all stivvered up, dressed in a light-brown lounge suit with a good trouser crease, a soft linen collar and—a red tie! Between us, on its green cushion the Ludo board with its brilliantly coloured squares:—all of it set before a background formed by the straight-backed, rectangular, settle-like sofa, with a charming covering which went with the rest of the scheme.

"Rather decorative,"—— remarked in an audible voice, turning her head on one side and quizzing. I can well believe it was. She looked wholly admirable.

November 21.

My Nightmare

Can't get rid of my cough. I have so many things to do—I am living in a fever of haste to get them done. Yet this cough hinders me. There is always something which drags me back from the achievement of my desires. It's like a nightmare; I see myself struggling violently to escape from a monster which draws continuously nearer, until his shadow falls across my path, when I begin to run and find my legs tied, etc. The only difference is that mine is a nightmare from which I never wake up. The haven of successful accomplishment remains as far off as ever. Oh! make haste.

November 29.

The English Review has returned my Essay!—This is a keen disappointment to me. "I wish I could use this, but I am really too full," the Editor writes. To be faintly encouraged and delicately rejected—why I prefer the printed form.

December 1.

More Irony

Renewed my cold—I do nothing all day but blow my nose, cough, and curse Austin Harrison.

M—— thinks the lungs are all right. "There is nothing there, I think," said he, this morning. Alleluia! I've had visions of consumption for weeks past and M—— himself has been expecting it. I always just escape: I always almost get something, do something, go somewhere, I have dabbled in a variety of diseases, but never got one downright[2]—but only enough to make me feel horribly unfit and very miserable without the consolation of being able to regard myself as the heroic victim of some incurable disorder. Instead of being Stevenson with tuberculosis, I've only been Jones with dyspepsia. So, too, in other directions, big events have always just missed me: by Herculean efforts I succeeded in giving up newspaper journalism and breaking thro' that steel environment—but only to become an Entomologist! I once achieved success in an Essay in the Academy, which attracted attention—a debut, however, that never developed. I had not quite arrived. It is always not quite.

Yesterday, I received a state visit from the Editor of the Furniture Record seeking advice on how to eradicate mites from upholstering! I received him ironically—but little did he understand.

I shot up like a ball on a bagatelle board all steamy into zoology (my once beloved science) but at once rolled dead into the very low hole of Economic Entomology! Curse.... Why can't I either have a first-rate disease or be a first-rate zoologist?

Now just think what a much better figure I should have cut, from the artistic view point, had I remained a newspaper reporter who had taught himself prodigious embryology out of F.M. Balfour's Textbook, who had cut sections of fowls' eggs and newt embryos with a hand microtome, who had passionately dissected out the hidden, internal anatomy of a great variety of animals, who could recite Wiedersheim's Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates and patter off the difference between a nephridium and a cœlomic duct without turning a hair—or the phylogenetic history (how absorbing!) of the kidney—pronephros, mesonephros and metanephros and all the ducts!... All this, over now and wasted. My hardly-won knowledge wrenched away is never brought into use—it lies piled up in my brain rotting. I could have become a first-rate comparative anatomist.

December 3.

Cold better. So back at work—gauging ale at Dunfermline as R—— puts it.

December 9.

In the evening found it quite impossible to stay in the house any longer: some vague fear drove me out. I was alarmed to be alone or to be still. It is my cough, I think.

Had two glasses of port at the Kensington Hotel, conversed with the barmaid, and then came home.

December 10.

"Don't be an old fossil," she said to me to-night, irrelevantly.

"A propos of what?" I inquired.

"Mother, here's W—— proposing to E——! Do come," cried ——, with intent to confuse. I laughed heartlessly.

Dear, dear, where will it all end? It's a sad business when you fall in love with a girl you don't like.

December 26.

Spent a romping day at the Flat. Kissed her sister twice under the mistletoe, and in the evening went to a cinema. After supper made a mock heroic speech and left hilarious.

1914

February 4.

... Finally and in conclusion I have fallen ill again, have again resumed my periodical visits to the Doctor, and am swallowing his rat-poison in a blind faith as aforetime. In fact, I am in London, leading the same solitary life, seeing no one, talking to no one, and daily struggling with this demon of ill-health. Can no one exorcise him? The sight of both my eyes is affected now. Blindness?

B—— continues whoring, drinking, sneering. R—— as usual, devoid of emotion, cold, passionless, Shavian, and self-absorbed, still titillates his mind with etching, sociology, music, etc., and I have at last ceased to bore him with what he probably calls the febrile utterances of an overwrought mind.

Such is my world! Oh! I forgot—on the floor below me is a corpse—that of an old gentleman who passed away suddenly in the night. In the small hours, the landlady went for the Doctor over the way, but he refused to come, saying the old man was too aged. So the poor gentleman died alone—in this rat hole of a place.

February 7.

Intending to buy my usual 3d. packet of Goldflakes, entered a tobacconist's in Piccadilly, but once inside surprised to find myself in a classy west-end establishment, which frightened my flabby nature into buying De Reszke's instead. I hadn't the courage to face the aristocrat behind the counter with a request for Goldflakes—probably not stocked. What would he think of me? Besides, I shrank from letting him see I was not perfectly well-to-do.

February 14.

I wonder what this year has in store for me? The first twenty-four years of my life have hunted me up and down the keyboard—I have been right to the top and also to the bottom—very happy and very miserable. Yet I prefer the life that is a hunt and an adventure. I don't really mind being chased like this. I almost thrive on the excitement. If I knew always where to look with any degree of certainty for my next day's life I should yawn! "What if to-day be sweet," I say, and never look ahead. To me, next week is next century.

The danger and uncertainty of my life make me cherish and hug closely to my heart various little projects that otherwise would seem unworthy. I work at them quickly, frantically, sometimes, afraid to whisper to a living soul what expectations I dare to harbour in my heart. What if now the end be near? Not a word! Let me go onward.

February 15.

To-day I have reviewed the situation carefully, exhaustively. I have peered into every aspect of my life and achievements and everything I have seen nauseates me. I can find no ray of comfort in anything I have done or in anything I might do. My life seems to have been a wilderness of futile endeavour. I started wrong from the very beginning. At the moment of my birth I was coming into the world in the wrong place and under wrong conditions. Why seek to overcome such colossal initial disadvantages? In this mood I found fault with my parentage, my inheritance, all my mental and physical disabilities....

This must be a form of incipient insanity. Even as a boy, I can remember being preternaturally absorbed in myself and preternaturally discontented. I was accustomed to exhaust my mind by the most harassing cross-examinations—no Counsel at the Bar ever treated a witness more mercilessly. After a day of this sort of thing, when silently and morbidly in every spare moment, at meals, in school, or on a walk, I would incessantly ply the questions, "What is the ultimate value of your work, cui bono?" etc. I went to bed in the evening with a feeling of hopelessness and dissatisfaction—haggard with considerations and reconsiderations of my outlook, my talent, my character, my future. In bed, I tossed from side to side, mentally exhausted with my efforts to obtain some satisfying conclusion—always hopeful, determined to the last to be able to square up my little affairs before going to sleep. But out of this mazy, vertiginous mass of thinking no satisfaction ever came. Now, I thought—or the next moment—or as soon as I review and revise myself in this or in that aspect, I shall be content. And so I went on, tearing down and reforming, revising and reviewing, till finally from sheer exhaustion and very unhappy I fell asleep.

Next morning I was all right.

February 20.

Am feeling very unwell. My ill-health, my isolation, baulked ambitions, and daily breadwinning all conspire to bring me down. The idea of a pistol and the end of it grows on me day by day.

February 21.

After four days of the most profound depression of spirits, bitterness, self-distrust, despair, I emerged from the cloud to-day quite suddenly (probably the arsenic and strychnine begins to take effect) and walked up Exhibition Road with the intention of visiting the Science Museum Library so as to refer to Schafer's Essentials of Histology (I have to watch myself carefully so that I may act at once as soon as the balance of mind is restored). In the lobby was a woman screaming as if in pain, with a passer-by at her side saying sternly, "What is the matter with you?" as if she were making herself ridiculous by suffering pain in public.

I passed by quickly, pretending not to notice lest—after all—I should be done out of my Essentials of Histology. Even in the Library I very nearly let the opportunity slide by picking up a book on squaring the circle, the preface and introduction of which I was forced to read.

March 4.

The Entomological Society

There were a great many Scarabees present who exhibited to one another poor little pinned insects in collecting-boxes ... It was really a one-man show, Prof. Poulton, a man of very considerable scientific attainments, being present, and shouting with a raucous voice in a way that must have scared some of the timid, unassuming collectors of our country's butterflies and moths. Like a great powerful sheep-dog, he got up and barked, "Mendelian characters," or "Germ plasm," what time the obedient flock ran together and bleated a pitiful applause. I suppose, having frequently heard these and similar phrases fall from the lips of the great man at these reunions, they have come to regard them as symbols of a ritual which they think it pious to accept without any question. So every time the Professor says, "Allelomorph," or some such phrase, they cross themselves and never venture to ask him what the hell it is all about.