. H. BLA.CKWELL LTD.,

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50 and 51 BROAD STREET,

I

A LAST DIARY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE JOURNAL OF A
DISAPPOINTED MAN
Fifth impression. Crown 8vo.
6s. net.

ENJOYING LIFE
AND OTHER LITERARY
REMAINS. Third impres-
sion. Crown 8vo. 6s. net.

A Last Diary

BY W. N. P. BARBELLION

WITH A PREFACE BY
ARTHUR J. CUMMINGS

We are in the power of no calamity while
Death is in our own." Religio Medici.

LONDON

CHATTO & WINDUS
1921

/ *

First published, November 25, 1920
Second impression, December 14, 1920

978583

All rights reserved

THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF
BARBELLION

THE opening entry in A Last Diary was
made on March 21, 1918 ; the closing
sentence was written on June 3, 1919. In
The Journal of a Disappointed Man the
record ended on October 21, 1917, with the
one word "Self-disgust." An important
difference between the first diary and that
now published lies in the fact that the first
embodies a carefully selected series of
extracts from twenty post- quarto volumes
of manuscript in which Barbellion had
recorded his thoughts and his observations
from the age of thirteen without any clearly
defined intention, except towards the end of
his life, of discovering them to any but one
or two of his intimate friends. He often
hinted to me that some parts of his diary
would " make good reading " if they could
be printed in essay form, and I think he
then had in mind chiefly those passages which

VI

su

LIFE AND CHARACTER

Applied the inspiration of Enjoying Life,
the volume of essays that revealed him more
distinctively in the character of " a naturalist
and a man of letters." Still, the diary was
primarily written for himself. It was his
means of self-expression, the secret chamber
of his soul into which no other person, how-
ever deep in his love and confidence, might
penetrate. More than once I asked him to
let me look at those parts which he thought
suitable for publication, but shyly he turned
aside the suggestion with the remark : " Some
day, perhaps, but not now." All I ever saw
was a part of the first essay in Enjoying
Life, and an account of his wanderings " in
a spirit of burning exultation " over the great
stretch of sandy " burrows " at the estuary
of that beautiful Devonshire river, the Taw,
where in long days of solitude he first taught
himself with the zeal and patience of the
born naturalist the ways of birds and fish
and insects, and learnt to love the sweet
harmony of the sunlight and the flowers ;
where, too, as a mere boy he first meditated
upon the mysteries of life and death.

OF BARBELLION vii

The earlier Journal, then, was, generally
speaking, spontaneous, not calculated for
effect, a part of himself. He wrote down in-
stinctively and by habit his inmost thoughts,
his lightest impression of the doings of the
day, a careless jest that amused him, an irri-
tating encounter with a foolish or a stupid
person, something newly seen in the structure
of a bird's wing, a sunset effect. It was only
on rare occasions that he deliberately experi-
mented with forms of expression. But I
cannot help thinking that the diary contained
in the present volume, though in one sense
equally a part of himself, has a somewhat
different quality. It appears to bear internal
evidence of having been written with an eye
to the reader because of his settled intention
that it should be published in a book. He
has drawn upon the memories of his youth
for many of the most interesting passages.
He has smoothed the rough edges of his
style with the loving care of an author
anticipating criticism, and anxious to do his
best. Whether the last diary will be found
less attractive on that account is not for me

viii LIFE AND CHARACTER

to say. The circumstances in which it was
written explain the difference, if, as I suppose,
it is easy to detect. In the earlier period
covered by A Last Diary the original
Journal was actually in the press ; in the
later period it had been published and
received with general goodwill. Barbellion
certainly did not expect to live to see the
Journal in print, and that is why he inserted
at the end its single false entry, " Barbellion
died on December 31 " -1917. A few of
the later reviewers, whose sense of propriety
was offended by this " twisting of the truth
for the sake of an artistic finish," rebuked
him for the trick played upon his readers.
But he refused to take the rebuke seriously,
" The fact is," he said with a whimsical smile,
" no man dare remain alive after writing such
a book."

A further difference between the present
book and its two predecessors is that both
the Journal and Enjoying Life were pre-
pared by himself for publication, though the
latter appeared after his death, whereas A
Last Diary was still in manuscript when

OF BARBELLION ix

he die<J. He left carefully written instruc-
tions as to the details of publication, and he
was extremely anxious that there should be
no " bowdlerising " of any part of the text.
He desired that at the end should be written
" The rest is silence." Nearly the whole of
the diary is in his own handwriting, which
in the last entries became a scarcely legible
scrawl, though in moments of exceptional
physical weakness he dictated to his wife
and sister. Up to the last his mind retained
its extraordinary strength and vigour. His
eyes never lost their curiously pathetic look
of questioning "liveness." In that feeble
form " a badly articulated skeleton " he had
called himself long before his eyes were
indeed the only feature left by which those
who loved him could still keep recognition
of his physical presence. His body was a
gaunt, white framework of skin and bone,
enclosing a spirit still so passionately alive
that it threatened to burst asunder the frail
bonds that imprisoned it. I think those
who read the diary will agree that while it
is mellower and more delicate in tone it

x LIFE AND CHARACTER

shows no sign of mental deterioration or of
any decline in the quality and texture of his
thoughts, certainly no failure in the power
of literary expression. The very last long
entry, written the day before he laid down
his pen to write no more, is a little master-
piece of joyous description, in which with
the exact knowledge of the zoologist and
the subtle sense of the artist, he gives reasons
why " the brightest thing in the world is a
Ctenophor in a glass jar standing in the sun."
Mr. Edward Shanks, in an essay of singular
understanding, has quoted this particular
entry, a flashing remembrance of earlier days,
as a characteristic example of those " ex-
quisite descriptions of landscapes and living
things which grow more vivid and more
moving as the end approaches." The
appreciation written by Mr. Shanks appeared
in March of the present year in the London
Mercury, which also published in successive
numbers other extracts from the diary that
is now given in extenso. With the help of
my brother, H. R. Cummings, who has
been responsible for most of the work in-
volved in preparing the manuscript for the

OF BARBELLION xi

press, I have made a few verbal changes and
corrections ; and certain passages have been
omitted which, now that Barbellion's identity
is established, seem to refer too openly and
too intimately to persons still alive. Other-
wise the entries appear exactly as they were
made.

In recent months I have been asked by
various persons, many of whom I do not
know and have never seen, but who have
been profoundly interested in the personality
of Barbellion, to write a " straightforward "
account of his life. Some of these corre-
spondents seem to imagine that it holds a
strange mystery not disclosed in the frank
story of the Journal, while others suspect
that the events of his career, as he recorded
them, are a judicious blend of truth and
fiction. I can only say as emphatically as
possible that there is no mystery of any sort,
and that the facts of his life are in close
accordance with his own narrative. Obviously
the disconnected diary form must be in-
complete, and in some respects puzzling ;
and clearly he selected for treatment in a
book those entries of fact which were appro-

xii LIFE AND CHARACTER

priate to the scheme of his journal. They
were chosen, as I have already indicated,
from a great mass of material that accumu-
lated from week to week over a period of
about fifteen years. But they are neither
invented nor deliberately coloured to suit
his purpose. When he spoke of himself he
spoke the truth as far as he knew it ; when
he spoke of others he spoke the truth as far
as he knew it ; when he spoke of actual
events they had happened as nearly as
possible as he related them.

The accounts of his career, published at
the time of his death last year, were accurate
in their general outline. Bruce Frederick
C u minings (Barbellion's real name) was born
at the little town of Barnstaple in North
Devon, on September 7, 1889. He was
the youngest of a family of six three boys
and three girls. His father was a journalist
who had achieved no mean reputation, local
though it was, as a pungent political writer,
and had created for himself what must have
been, even in those days, a peculiar position
for the district representative of a country

OF BARBEL LI ON xiii

newspaper. He was a shrewd but kindly
judge of men ; he had a quick wit, a facile pen,
and an unusual charm of manner that made
him a popular figure everywhere. In fact,
in the area covered by his activities he exer-
cised in his prime a personal influence
unique of its kind, and such as would be
scarcely possible under modern conditions of
newspaper work. Though they had little
in common temperamentally, there always
existed a strong tie of affection between my
father and Barbellion, and I believe there is
to be found among the latter's still un-
examined literary remains a sympathetic
sketch of the personality of John Cummings.
In his infancy Barbellion nearly died from
an attack of pneumonia, and from that early
illness, one is inclined to think, his subsequent
ill-health originated. He was a puny, under-
sized child, nervously shy, with a tiny white
face and large brown melancholy eyes. He
was so frail that he was rather unduly
coddled, and was kept at home beyond the
age at which the rest of us had been sent to
school. I taught him in my father's office-

xiv LIFE AND CHARACTER

study to read and write, as well as the
rudiments of English history and English
literature, and a little Latin. Up to the age
of nine, when he started to attend a large
private school in the town, he was slow of
apprehension, but of an inquiring mind, and
he rarely forgot what he had once learnt.
He was nearly twelve years old before his
faculties began to develop, and they developed
rapidly. He revealed an aptitude for mathe-
matics, and a really surprising gift of com-
position ; some of his school essays, both in
style and manner, and in the precocity of
their thought, might almost have been
written by a mature man of letters. The
headmaster of the school, who had been a
Somersetshire County cricketer, and whose
educational outlook was dominated by his
sense of the value of sports and games, was
a little disconcerted by this strange, shy boy
and his queer and precise knowledge of out-
of-the-way things, but he had the acumen
to recognise his abilities and to predict for
him a brilliant future. He read all kinds of
books, from Kingsley to Carlyle, with an

OF BARBELLION xv

insatiable appetite. It was about this time,
too, that he began those long tramps into
the countryside, over the hills to watch the
staghounds meet, and along the broad river
marshes, that provided the beginnings and
the foundation of the diary habit, which
became in time the very breath of his inner
life. He loved the open air, and all that the
open air meant. After hours of absence,
we knew not where, he would return glowing
with happy excitement at some adventure
with a friendly fisherman, or at the identifi-
cation of a rare bird. Even now the wonder
of the world was gripping him in its bewitch-
ing spell. In later days he expressed its
power over him in words such as these, with
many variations :

" Like a beautiful and terrible mistress, the world
holds me its devoted slave. She flouts me, but I
love her still. She is cruel, but still I love her.
My love for her is a guilty love for the voluptuous
curves of the Devonshire moors, for the bland
benignity of the sun smiling alike on the just and
on the unjust, for the sea which washes in a
beautiful shell or a corpse with the same meditative
indifference. "

xvi LIFE AND CHARACTER

In these early years, I remember, the diary
took the outward form of an old exercise book,
neatly labelled and numbered, and it reflected
all his observations on nature. The records,
some of which were reproduced from time to
time in The Zoologist, were valuable not
only in their careful exactitude, but for their
breadth of suggestion, and that inquiring
spirit into the why of things which proved
him to be no mere classifier or reporter.
They were the outcome of long vigils of
concentrated watching. I have known him
to stay for two or three hours at a stretch in
one tense position, silently noting the torpid
movements of half a dozen bats withdrawn
from some disused mine and kept for experi-
ments in the little drawing-room that was
more like a laboratory than a place to sit in.
He probably knew more about North Devon
and the wild creatures that inhabited its
wide spaces than any living person. Some-
times he was accompanied on his journeys,
which occupied most of his spare time and
the greater part of the week-ends, by two or
three boisterously high-spirited acquaintances

OF BARBELLION xvii

of his own age, who, though leagues removed
from him in character and outlook, seemed
to find a mysterious charm in his companion-
ship, and whose solemn respect for his natural
history lore he cunningly made use of by
employing them to search for specimens
under his guidance and direction.

When he was fourteen years of age his
fixed determination to become a naturalist
by profession was accepted by all of us as
a settled thing. My father, whose income
was at this time reduced through illness by
about half, generously encouraged him in
his ambition by giving him more pocket
money than any of his brothers and sisters
had received in palmier days, in order that
he might add to his rapidly increasing library
of costly books on zoology and biology ; and
by allowing him such freedom of move-
ment as can rarely fall to the lot of a small
boy in an ordinary middle-class home.
Here let me say that after the publication
of his Journal, Barbellion himself expressed
regret at having here and there in the book
unconsciously conveyed the impression that

xviii LIFE AND CHARACTER

in the home of his childhood and youth he
received little practical help and sympathy
in the pursuit of his great quest. The exact
contrary was, in fact, the case ; and when
in 1910, owing to my father's second, and
this time complete, breakdown Barbellion
had to decline the offer of a small appoint-
ment at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory,
the blow was not less bitter to his parents
than to himself. At that time he was the
only son at home. He had been allowed
a great amount of leisure for study ; but
now, as one of two young reporters on my
father's staff, he was compelled for the time
being to carry a responsibility which he
feared and detested. But the opportunity
for which he had passionately worked and
impatiently waited was not long in coming.
In the following year, in open competition
with men from the Universities who had been
specially coached for the examination, he
won his way by his own exertions to the
staff of the Natural History Museum at
South Kensington.
Probably the happiest period of his life

OF BARBELLION xix

was that of his late youth up to the time of
my father's collapse. He was in somewhat
better health than in his childhood ; the joy
of living intoxicated his being ; he was able
to saunter at his own free will over his
beloved hills and dales ; he was beginning to
feel his strength and to shape his knowledge ;
and before him stretched a bright vista of
vague, alluring, infinite possibilities. And at
this time, apart from the diary, he was trying
his hand at writing, and revelling in that
delicious experience of youth putting to
proof his newly awakened powers. I have
in my possession scores of early letters that
testify eloquently to his ability to perceive,
to think, and to write. Here is a letter which,
at the age of seventeen, he wrote to my
brother Harry. It seems to me remarkable
for the vigour and clearness with which he
was able to set down his reflections on a dark
and difficult point of philosophy, and interest-
ing because it shows how already his mind
was occupied with the mystery of himself.

" I am writing really [he says] to discuss ' Myself
with you. I am particularly interested in it [an

xx LIFE AND CHARACTER

article on "Myself" written by Harry] because it
differs so entirely from my own feelings. I am a
mendicant friar. It is so difficult to see what one
really believes, as distinct from what one feels ; but
for myself I can see only too distinctly the world
without my own insignificant self, after death or
before birth.

" There is one power which I have to an unusual
extent developed, so I think, and that is the faculty
of divesting my thoughts of all subjectivity. I can
see myself as so much specialised protoplasm.
Sometimes I almost think that in thus divesting the
mind of particulars I seize the universal and for a
short but vivid moment look through the veil at
*the thing itself.' I really cannot make myself
clear without a great deal of care, and I hope you
will not misunderstand me.

" But, to diverge somewhat, it was only the other
day that suddenly, when I was not expecting it, I
saw motlier's face in an objective way. I saw and
looked on it as a stranger who had never seen her ;
and mind you, there is a good deal of difference
between these two points of view. I never realised
until that moment that we look on those whom we
know so well in the light and shade of the know-
ledge we have gained before. . . .

"The natural conclusion of these observations I
take to be that we never know how anthropomorphic
our views may really be. (Somebody else has said
this somewhere, but I don't know who. Huxley ?) I

OF BARBELLION xxi

am naturally sceptical of all sciences and systems
of philosophy. Science, of course, deals with the
experienced universe, and cannot possibly ever reach
ultimate truth. In philosophy I am always haunted
by the suspicion that, if we only knew, we are not
anywhere near being able to make even a rough
guess at the truth.

" Throw a dog a bone. Fll take it that the dog,
if it is an intelligent one, discusses the bone
thoroughly. It discovers the natural law of the
bone that it satisfies hunger and provides happiness,
and it forms a scientific theory (intelligent dog,
mind you) to explain this inseparable correlative
phenomenon. It says: 'The world is probably to
be considered as an immense mechanism of separate
bone-throwing machines, worked by an unknown
creature. Bone is necessary to the dog existence as
it is the ineffable vital essence of Divine Love in
which we live, move, and have our being. This is so,
because it has been proved by experiment that in
the absence of bone-throwers, dogs have been known
to die/

" Of course you laugh. But why not ? I cannot
help thinking that we may very well be as much in
the dark as the dogs. Our philosophy may be
incorrect in respect of the Universe, Reality, and
God as the dog's philosophy is in respect of the
simple process of digestion and the accompanying
physiological changes.

" If I could drop my anchor behind a rock of

xxii LIFE AND CHARACTER

certainty I should be greatly relieved, but who can
convince a man if he cannot convince himself?

" To sum up, what I think is that we i.e. 9 each
one of us separately are exceedingly unimportant
wisps, little bits of body, mind, and spirit, but that
in the whole, as humanity, we are a great immortal
organism of real import if we could see behind the
veil. In other words I regard individuals as in-
effectual units, but the mass as a spiritual power.
The old philosophical idea that the world was a big
animal had an element of truth in it."

It was only by the skin of his teeth that
Barbellion passed the doctors after getting
through the scientific examination for the
South Kensington post. He was suffering
from chronic dyspepsia, he was more than six
feet in height, and as thin as a rake, and he
looked like a typical consumptive. The
medical gentlemen solemnly shook their
heads, but after scrutinising him with as
much care as if he were one of his own
museum specimens they could discover
no organic defect, and their inability to
"classify" him no doubt saved Barbellion
from what would have been the most dread-
ful disappointment of his life. His appear-

OF BARBELLION xxiii

ance, notwithstanding his emaciation, was
striking. His great height, causing him to
stoop slightly, produced an air and attitude
of studiousness peculiar to himself. A head
of noble proportions was crowned by a thick
mass of soft, brown hair tumbling carelessly
about his brow. Deepset, lustrous eyes, wide
apart and aglow with eager life, lighted up
a pale, sharply pointed countenance with an
indescribable vividness of expression. His
nose, once straight and shapely, owing to an
accident was irregular in its contour, but by
no means unpleasing in its irregularity, for
it imparted a kind of rugged friendliness to
the whole face ; and he had a curious habit
in moments of animation of visibly dilating
the nostrils, as if unable to contain his
excitement. His mouth was large, firm,
yet mobile, and his chin like a rock. He
had a musical voice, which he used without
effort, and when he spoke, especially when
he chose to let himself go on any subject
that had aroused his interest, the energetic
play of his features, the vital intensity which
he threw into every expression, had an

xxiv LIFE AND CHARACTER

irresistible effect of compulsion upon his
friends. His hands were strong and sensi-
tive, with a remarkable fineness of touch
very useful to him in the laboratory, and it
was always a pleasure to watch them at
work upon a delicate dissection. His hands
and arms were much more active members
than his legs. In conversation he tried in
vain to control a lifelong and amusing habit
of throwing them out and beating the air
violently to emphasise a point in argument.
But he moved and walked languidly, like a
tired man, as indeed he was. He was con-
tinuously unwell "chronically sub-normal"
was how he once described his condition to
me, half playfully. He had lost forever that
sense of abounding physical well-being which
gives zest to living and strength to endure.
But he has discussed his own symptoms
in the Journal with a force and ironic
humour that I have not the capacity or the
will to imitate. I will say no more than
that those who were closest to him re-
member with wondering admiration the
magnificent struggle which he maintained

OF BARBELLION xxv

against his illness and its effect upon his
work. His attacks of depression he kept
almost invariably to himself. In the presence
of others he was full of high courage, en-
grossed in his plans for the future, strong
in the determination not to be mastered by
physical weakness. " I am not going to be
beaten " he declared after one very bad bout,
" if I develop all the diseases in the doctor's
index. I mean to do what 1 have set out
to do if it has to be done in a bath-chair."
His will-power was enormous, unconquer-
able. Again and again he spurred himself
on to work with an appalling expenditure of
nervous energy, when an ordinary man might
have flung up his hands and resigned himself
to passive despair.

Let me quote from one of many letters
written to me from South Kensington, all
charged with a strangely arresting amalgam
of hope, despair, defiance, cravings for
imaginative sympathy, lofty ideals, and
throbbing with a prodigious passion of life.
Each and every one was a challenge and a
protest. Surely there never was a half-

xxvi LIFE AND CHARACTER

dead man more alive. It was shortly after
war broke out that he wrote this letter :

" The reason why the article The Joy of Life '
has not been sent you is because it is not finished. . . .
My mood just now is scarcely fitted for the comple-
tion of an essay with such a title. I am like to ask
sullenly, " What the devil's the good ?" I have
already drawn out of my inside big ropy entrails, all
hot and steaming, and you say 'Very nice,' or
' effectively expressed,' and Austin Harrison says he
is too full up.' Damn his eyes ! Damn everything !
Hall Caine, poor man, said once that a most terrible
thing had happened to him. He sat in a railway
carriage opposite a young woman reading a book
written * in his life's blood,' and she kept looking up
listlessly to see the names of the stations. ' The Joy
of Life/ my friend, in the completed state will make
people sit up perhaps. So I think as I write it.
But perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. It has been like the
birth of a child to me. I've been walking about ' in
the family way.' The other essay was a relief to be
able to bring forth. Both are self-revelations. . . .
My journal is full of them, and one day when, as is
probable, I have predeceased you, you will find much
of B. F. C. in it almost as he appears to His Maker.
It is a study in the nude, with no appeal to the

highly pennnicanised intellect of such a being as ,

but there is meaty stuff in it, raw, red, or underdone.

" It is curious to me how satisfied we all are with
wholly inadequate opinions and ideas as to the

OF BARBELLION xxvii

character and nature of our friends. For example, I
have a rough-and-ready estimate of yourself which
has casually grown up over a series of years. But I
don't really feel very satisfied that I know you, and
most folk wouldn't care if they didn't. They want
neither to understand nor to be understood. They
walk about life as at a mask ball, content to remain
unknown and unrealised by the consciousness of any
single human being. A man can live with his wife
all his days and never be known to her particularly
if they are in love. And the extraordinary thing to
me is that they don't wish to understand each other.
They accept each other's current coin without
question. That seems to me to be uncanny to be
lolling about in the arms of someone who is virtually
a stranger to you.

"Not only ourselves, but everything is bound
about with innumerable concentric walls of impene-
trable armour. I long to pull them down, to tear
down all the curtains, screens, and dividing partitions,
to walk about with my clothes off, to make a large
ventral incision and expose my heart. I am sick of
being tied up in flesh and clothes, hemmed in by
walls, by prosies, deceits. I want to pull people by
the nose and be brutally candid. I want everyone to
know, to be told everything. It annoys me to find
someone who doesn't realise some horrible actuality
like cancer or murder, or who has not heard of
R. L. S., or like an infamous man I met the other
day who was not sufficiently alive to know that .it

xxviii LIFE AND CHARACTER

was Amundsen not Scott (as he nonchalantly
assumed) who got to the Pole first. . . .

" You ask for my dyspepsia in a way which, my
dear, good lad, I cannot resist. Well, it has been
bad, damned bad. There you are ! I have been in
hell without the energy to lift up mine eyes. The
first twenty-five years of my life have chased me up
and down the keyboard. I have been to the top
and to the bottom, very happy and very miserable.
But don't think I am whining I prefer a life which
is a hunt, and an adventure rather than a study in
still life. If you suffer, Balzac said proudly, at least
you live. If I were suddenly assured of wealth and
health, long to live, I should have to walk about
cutting other people's throats so as to reintroduce
the element of excitement. At this present moment
I am feeling so full of joie de vivre that a summons
to depart coming now would exasperate me into fury.
I should die cursing like an intoxicated trooper. It
seems unthinkable if life were the sheer wall of a
precipice, I should stick to it by force of attraction !

" You shall see in the ' Joy of Life ' how much I
have grown to love it. There is a little beast which
draws its life to start with rather precariously
attached to a crab. But gradually it sends out
filaments which burrow in and penetrate every fibre
of its host so that to separate host and parasite
means a grievous rupture. I have become attached
in the same way, but not to a crab !

"Life is extraordinarily distracting. At times

OF BARBELLION xxix

Zoology melts away from my purview. Gradually, I
shouldn't be at all surprised if other interests burrow
in under my foundations (laid in Zoology) and
the whole superstructure collapse. If I go to a
sculpture gallery, the continued study of entomology
appears impossible I will be a sculptor. If I go to
the opera, then I am going to take up music seriously.
Or if I get a new beast (an extraordinary new form
of bird parasite brought back by the New Guinea
Expedition, old sport ! phew !) nothing else can
interest me on earth, I think. But something does,
and with a wrench I turn away presently to fresh
pastures. Life is a series of wrenches, I tremble for
the fixity of my purposes ; and as you know so well,
I am an ambitious man, and my purposes are very
dear to me. You see what a trembling, colour-
changing, invertebrate, jelly-fish of a brother you
have. . . . But you are the man I look to. . . ."

Whatever kind of man Barbellion may
have been he certainly was not a jelly-fish.
Any or all of these sentiments might have
come red-hot from his diary, and they are
absolutely typical of the delightfully stimu-
lating and provocative letters which he loved
to write, and could write better than any
man I have ever known. He was as greedy
as a shark for life in the raw, for the whole
of life. He longed to capture and compre-

xxx LIFE AND CHARACTER

hend the entire universe, and would never
have been content with less. "I could
swallow landscapes," he says, "and swill
down sunsets, or grapple the whole earth to
me with hoops of steel, but the world is so
impassive, silent, secret." He despised his
body because it impeded his pursuit of the
elusive uncapturable. And while he pursued
Fate, Fate followed close on his heels. In
London he grew slowly and steadily worse.
Doctors tinkered with him, and he tinkered
himself with their ineffectual nostrums. But
at last, after he had complained one day of
partial blindness and of loss of power in his
right arm, I persuaded him, on the advice
of a wisely suspicious young physician, to
see a first-class nerve specialist. This man
quickly discovered the secret of his complex
and never-ending symptoms. Without re-
vealing the truth to Barbellion, he told me
that he was a doomed man, in the grip of a
horrible and obscure disease of which I had
never heard. Disseminated sclerosis was
the name which the specialist gave to it ;
and its effect, produced apparently by a

OF BARBELL1ON xxxi

microbe that attacks certain cells of the
spinal cord, is to destroy in the course of
a few years or in some cases many years
every function of the body, killing its
victim by degrees in a slow, ruthless process
of disintegration.

The specialist was strongly of the opinion
that the truth should not be told my brother.
" If we do so," he said, " we shall assuredly
kick him down the hill far more quickly than
he will travel if we keep him hopeful by
treating the symptoms from time to time as
they arise." Barbellion, then, was told he
was not " up to standard," that he had been
working too hard, was in need of a prolonged
rest, and could be restored to health only
by means of a long course of careful and
regular treatment. The fact disposes of the
criticism of a few unfriendly reviewers who,
without reading the Journal closely enough
to disarm their indignation, accused Barbel-
lion of a selfish and despicable act in getting
married when he knew himself to be dying
from an incurable malady. Whether I was
right or wrong in accepting the medical man's

xxxii LIFE AND CHARACTER

advice, I do not regret the course I took.
Barbellion, in a moment of overwhelming
despair at the tragedy of his life, and the
calamity it had brought upon his wife and
child, afterwards cried out in protest against
my deception based as it was on expert
judgment, and inspired solely by an affection-
ate desire to shield him from acute distress
in the remaining period of his life after I
had been told that he might live five, ten,
fifteen years longer. Yet, reviewing all the
circumstances, I realise that I could have
come to no other decision even if I might
have foreseen all that was to follow. Let it be
clearly understood that the devoted woman to
whom he became engaged was at once made
aware of his actual condition, and after con-
sultation with her family and an interview
with the doctor, who left her under no mis-
apprehension as to the facts, she calmly and
courageously chose to link her fate with that
of Barbellion. How by a curious and
dramatic accident Barbellion shortly after his
marriage discovered the truth about himself,
and kept it for a time from his wife in the

OF BARBELLION xxxiii

belief that she did not know, is related with
unconscious pathos in the Journal.

Barbellion was married in September,
1915. In July, 1917, he was compelled to
resign his appointment at the South Ken-
sington Museum. His life came to an end
on October 22, 1919, in the quaint old
country cottage at Gerrard's Cross, Bucking-
hamshire, where for many months he had
lain like a wraith, tenderly ministered to
in his utter weakness by those who loved
him. His age was thirty-one. He was glad
to die. " Life," to use a phrase he was fond
of repeating, " pursued him like a fury " to
the end ; but as he lingered on, weary and
helpless, he was increasingly haunted by the
fear of becoming a grave burden to his
family. The publication of the Journal and
the sympathetic reception it met with from
the press and public were sources of profound
comfort to his restless soul, yearning as he
had yearned from childhood to find friendly
listeners to the beating of his heart, fiercely
panting for a large-hearted response to
his self-revealing, half-wistful, half-defiant

xxxiv LIFE AND CHARACTER

appeal to the comprehension of all humanity.
" The kindness almost everybody has shown
the Journal, and the fact that so many
have understood its meaning," he said to
me shortly before he died, " have entirely
changed my outlook. My horizon has
cleared, my thoughts are tinged with sweet-
ness, and I am content." Earlier than this
he had written: "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."

He did not accomplish a tithe of what he
had planned to do, but in the extent and
character of his output he achieved by sheer
force of will-power, supported by an in-
vincible ambition and an incessant intel-
lectual industry that laughed his ill-health
in the face, more than seemed possible to
those of us who knew the nature of the
disorder against which he fought with
undying courage every day of his life.
It is scarcely surprising that there have
been diverse estimates of his character and

OF BARBELLION xxxv

capacities, some wise and penetrating, many
imperfect and wide of the mark. It is not
for me to try to do more than correct a few
crude or glaringly false impressions of the
kind of man Barbellion was. Others must
judge of the quality of his genius and of his
place in life and literature. But I can
speak of Barbellion as the man I knew him
to be. He was not the egotist, pure and
simple, naked and complete, that he some-
times accused himself of being and is
supposed by numerous critics and readers
of the Journal to have been.

His portrait of himself was neither con-
summate nor, as Mr. Shanks well says,
"immutable." "In the nude," declared
Barbellion, more than once, with an air of
blunt finality. Yes, but only as he imagined
himself to look in the nude.

He was forever peering at himself from
changing angles, and he was never quite
sure that the point of view of the moment
was the true one. Incontinently curious
about himself, he was never certain about
the real Barbellion. One day he was " so

xxxvi LIFE AND CHARACTER

much specialised protoplasm"; another day
he was Alexander with the world at his
feet ; and then he was a lonely boy pining
for a few intimate friends. His sensations
at once puzzled and fascinated him.

" I am apparently [he said] a triple personality :
(1) The respectable youth; (2) the foul-mouthed
commentator and critic; (3) the real but un-
known I."

Many times he tried thus to docket his
manifold personality in distinguishable de-
partments. It was a hopeless task. " Re-
spectability " was the last word to apply to
him. Foul-mouthed he never was, unless a
man is foul-mouthed who calls a thing by its
true name and will not cover it with a sham
or a substitute. In his talks with me he
was as " abandoned " in his frankness as in
theJoiwnal; and the longer 1 knew him the
more I admired the boldness of his vision ;
the unimpeachable honesty and therefore
the essential purity of his mind.

His habit of self-introspection and his
mordant descriptions of his countless symp-
toms were not the "inward notes" or the

OF BARBELLION xxxvii

weak outpourings of a hypochondriac. His
whole bearing and his attitude to life in
general were quite uncharacteristic of the
hypochondriac as that type of person is
commonly depicted and understood. It
should be remembered that his symptoms
were real symptoms and as depressing as
they were painful, and his disease a terribly
real disease which affected from the be-
ginning almost every organ of his body.
Though he was rarely miserable he had
something to be miserable about, and the
accepted definition of a hypochondriac is
that of one whose morbid state of mind is
produced by a constitutional melancholy for
which there is no palpable cause. He
scarcely ever spoke of his dyspepsia, his
muscular tremors, his palpitations of the
heart, and all the other physical disturbances
which beset him from day to day, except
with a certain wry humour ; and while it is
true that he would discuss his condition
with the air of an enthusiastic anatomist
who had just been contemplating some
unusually interesting corpus vile, he talked

xxxviii LIFE AND CHARACTER

of it only when directly questioned about it,
or to explain why a piece of work that he
was anxious to finish had been interrupted
or delayed. He had a kind of disgust for
his own emaciated appearance, arising, not
improbably, from his aesthetic admiration
for the human form in its highest develop-
ment. On one occasion, when we were
spending a quiet holiday together at a little
Breton fishing village, I had some difficulty
in persuading him to bathe in the sea on
account of his objection to exposing his
figure to the view of passers-by. The only
thing that might be considered in the least
morbid in his point of view with regard to
his health was a fixed and absolutely
erroneous belief that his weakness was
hereditary. His parents were both over
sixty when they died from illnesses each of
which had a definitely traceable cause.
Though the other members of the family
enjoyed exceptionally good health, he con-
tinued to the last to suspect that we were
all physically decadent, and nothing could
shake his conviction that my particular

OF BARBELLION xxxix

complaint was heart disease, regardless of
the fact frequently pointed out to him
that in the Army I had been passed Al
with monotonous regularity.

Mr. Wells has referred to him as "an
egotistical young naturalist"; in the same
allusion, however, he reiterated the funda-
mental truth that " we are all egotists
within the limits of our power of expres-
sion." Barbellion was intensely interested
in himself, but he was also intensely in-
terested in other people. He had not that
egotistical imagination of the purely self-
centred man which looks inward all the
time because nothing outside the province
of his own self-consciousness concerns him.
He had an objective interest in himself, an
outcome of the peculiar faculty which he
divulged in the first of the two letters
already quoted of looking at human beings,
even his own mother, objectively. He
described and explained himself so persist-
ently and so thoroughly because he had an
obviously better opportunity of studying
himself with nice precision and attentive

xl LIFE AND CHARACTER

care than he had for the study of other
people. He regarded himself quite openly
and quite naturally as a human specimen
to be examined, classified, and dissected,
and he did his work with the detailed
skill and the truthful approach of a
scientific investigator. The "limits of his
power of expression" being far beyond
those of the average man, he was able to
give a picture of himself that lives on
account of its simple and daring candour.
He is not afraid to be frank in giving
expression to a thought merely because it
may be an unpleasant or a selfish thought.
If a shadowy doubt assails him, or an outre
criticism presents itself about a beloved
friend, he sets it down ; if he feels a sensuous
joy in bathing in the sea and loves to look
upon his "pink skin," or derives a catlike
satisfaction from rolling a cigarette between
his fingers ; if he thinks he sees a meanness
in his own heart, or catches himself out in
some questionable or unworthy piece of
conduct, however trivial, the diary receives
its faithful record. The dissimilarity between

OF BARBELLION xli

Barbellion and other persons is that, while
those of us who have not been blessed or
cursed with the temperament of an ox
frequently experience these queer spon-
taneous promptings about common things
and about ourselves and our fellow-creatures
that come we know not how or why, so far
from dragging the half-formed thought into
the light of open confession and giving it
definite shape, we avert our gaze as from
an evil thing, or return to it in secret and
stealth, It is scarcely possible, one imagines,
to read Barbellion honestly without realis-
ing that he says in plain, forceful language
what the rest of us often think but have not
the nerve to say aloud either to others or to
ourselves.

Resolute courage was the regnant quality
of Barbellion's character. There was no
issue he was afraid to face. The more it
frightened him the more grimly he held on.
Ineffaceable curiosity and the force of his
will were a formidable combination. He
saw everything in focus, with clear and
steady eye. He penetrated the heart of a

xlii LIFE AND CHARACTER

book with unerring instinct, as Balzac tore
out the secret of a woman's heart. It was
hopeless to attempt to deceive him with a
sophistry or a platitude. His sense of
justice was deep and strong. While he
loved disputation for its own sake, no form
of mental recreation making a stronger
appeal to his vivid intelligence than a set
battle in dialectics, he rarely missed the
essential argument, which he commonly
handled with solid mastery and generally
with a wealth of convincing illustrations.
He was a captivating companion; easy,
humorous, and suggestive in his talk over a
wide range of subjects, and knowing some-
thing new or piquant about every bramble
bush, every bird, every beetle that he
passed or that flitted or crept across his
path. Anyone less like a self- tormentor,
a malade imaginaire, a man with a laugh
on the wrong side of his mouth could not
be imagined. It would be using a weak
expression to say that he was cheerful.
He was so acutely alive to the imperious
charm of the world in which he lived that

OF BARBELLION xliii

a fit of depression, caused usually by some
obstinate symptom of ill-health, which
foiled his plans and fretted his temper,
would melt away at a touch. The cry of a
peewit, a gleam of sunshine on the hill, a
phrase from a Beethoven Symphony, a line
out of Francis Thompson (whose gorgeous
verse inflamed his senses to a white heat
of enjoyment), or a warm note of human
sympathy, would transform him at once into
another being. He yearned for the fellow-
ship of sympathy, and rejoiced exceedingly
when he seemed to find it. He had
a real capacity for friendship, and his
affections, when once they were engaged,
were deep and abiding; but he could be
impishly provoking to an acquaintance, and
he suffered fools without gladness or much
self-restraint. His judgments of men and
women whom he met casually or infrequently
were not to be relied upon. He was as
impulsive as a woman of Barcelona, and the
life-history of some harmless creature newly
introduced would be created promptly on
such inadequate data as a fortuitous remark,

xliv LIFE AND CHARACTER

an odd gesture, or a sweating hand. His
nature, I believe, is less readily to be
explained by his so-called egotism than by
his supersensitiveness to the world about him
and the beings in it. He bathed in the sea
of life in a perpetual ecstasy, and sometimes
it was an ecstasy of pain that made him call
out upon God and all the gods, and the
devils as well. One of the truest things I
have heard said about him was said the
other day by an accomplished critic who
had never met him, but who had read his
Journal with a seeing eye. " It seems to
me," he remarked, " that Barbellion was a
man with a skin too few." A wise saying
to which Barbellion himself would have
been the first to give his appreciative
assent.

Nearly every writer who has tried to form
an estimate of my brother s potentialities
has discussed the question whether he would
have deserted the science of zoology, his
first consuming love, for the broader paths of
literature. Now that he is dead it must
appear to be a fruitless speculation. But it

OF BARBELLION xlv

is not perhaps without interest. I am
convinced that he would not have remained
at South Kensington longer than was
necessary to provide him with bread and
butter. He was that comparatively rare
combination a man of science, and a man of
letters. He was in love with life as soon as
he was in love with science, and the life of
man inspired his imagination more than the
lives of the animals it was his business to
know about. His scientific zeal was aroused
in "an extraordinary new form of bird
parasite brought back by the New Guinea
Expedition," as much because it was a new
form of life as because it appealed to
the enthusiasm of the trained zoologist.
Years before he was filled with sickening
disappointment by the drudgery of his
labours and the narrow limitations imposed
upon him in a department of Natural
History that he cared for least, he was con-
templating large literary schemes, some of
which he unfolded to me with an infectious
ardour of hope and determination. He
planned in these years a novel that was to be

xlvi LIFE AND CHARACTER

of immense length, with something of the
scope of the Comedie Humaine, and a series
of logically developed treatises on the lines
of his essay, " The Passion for Perpetua-
tion," which in his own words were to be his
magnum opus. His hopes, high and un-
quenchable as they always appeared to be,
were cut short by his lingering illness and
his early death. There remain only a few
documentary fragments that testify to the
boldness of his intentions. His one pub-
lished attempt at a short story, "How
Tom Snored," is in my opinion quite
unworthy of his abilities. It is impossible to
say in what direction his undoubted literary
powers would have found their true outlet.
It is certain that if he had lived in the full
enjoyment of normal health the Journal in
its present outward form or as a narrative of
his career and an unreserved record of his
personal reflections would never have been
published. It is equally certain that months
before he resigned his appointment on the
staff of the South Kensington Museum he
was weary of his work there, and the bias of

OF BARBELLION xlvii

his mind was turning rapidly from the cause
of biological science towards the humanities.
His restless spirit demanded a wider range
of expression, unhampered by the many
exasperating futilities of his professional
labours. But his published work is perhaps
all the more valuable on account of his
exertions in the laboratory, because even
when he " meddles " in his fantastic and
compelling way " with things that are too
high for me, not as a recreation but as a
result of intense intellectual discomfort "
even at these moments, when he plunges
with impetuous gusto into the infinities of
time and space and God, there is a certain
sanity of statement, a suggestion of strength
in reserve, a studied self-control in the
handling of his theme that his scientific
habit of mind makes possible and emphasises.
This instinctive restraint can be discovered
again and again in vehement passages that
at a glance seem to bear the mark of reckless
extravagance.

A Last Diary is the last of Barbellion
as a writer. For those of us who knew and

xlviii LIFE OF BARBELLION

loved him as a boy and as a man the
memory of his masterful personality his
courage, his wit, his magnetism, his pride
of intellect and his modesty withal, his
afflictions, his affectionate tenderness will
endure without ceasing. As the most
modern of the journal- writers he addresses
to the public a dauntless message, the value
and significance of which time alone can
measure. Like all men of abnormal sensi-
bility he suffered deeply ; but if he suffered
deeply he enjoyed also his moments of
exquisite happiness. He lived fast. He
was for ever bounding forward in an un-
tameable effort to grasp the unknown and
unknowable. Fate struck him blow upon
blow, but though his head was often bloody
it remained unbowed. Mr. Wells says the
story of his life is a "recorded unhappiness."
I prefer to think of it as a sovereign
challenge.

A. J. CUMMINGS.

1920.

1918

A LAST DIARY

1918

March 21st, 1918. Misery is protean in
its shapes, for all are indescribable. I am
tongue-tied. Folk come and see me and
conclude it's not so bad after all just as
civilians tour the front and suppose they
have seen war on account of a soldier with
a broken head or an arm in a sling. Others
are getting used to me, though I am not
getting used to myself.

Honest British jurymen would say
" Temporarily insane " if I had a chance of
showing my metal. 1 wish I could lapse
into permanent insanity 'twould be a
relief to let go control and slide away down,
down. Which is the farthest star ? I
would get away there and start afresh, blot
out all memory of this world and its doings.
Here, even the birds and flowers seem

3

4 A LAST DIARY

soiled. It makes me impatient to see them
they are indifferent, they do not know.
Those that do not know are pathetic, and
those knowing are miserable. It is ghostly
to live in a house with a little child at the
best of times now at the worst of times a
child's innocence haunts me always.

March 25th, 1918. I shall not easily
forget yesterday (Sunday). It was just like
Mons Sunday. The spring shambles began
on Thursday in brilliant summer weather.
Yesterday also was fine, the sky cloudless,
very warm with scarcely a breeze. They
wheeled me into the garden for an hour:
primroses, violets, butterflies, bees ; the
song of the chaffinches and thrushes other-
wise silence. With the newspaper on my
knee, the beauty of the day was oppressive.
Its unusualness at this time of year seemed
of evil import. Folk shake their heads, and
they say in the village there is to be an
earthquake on account of the heat. In rural
districts simple souls believe it is the end of
the world coming upon us.

A LAST DIARY 5

At such times as these my isolation here
is agonising. I write the word, but itself
alone conveys little. I spend hours by
myself unable to talk or write, but only to
think. The war news has barely crossed my
lips once, not even to the bedpost in fact,
I have no bedpost. And the cat and
canary and baby would not understand. It
is hard even to look them in the face
without shame. All the while I hear the
repeated " kling " in my ears as the wheel
of my destiny comes full circle not once
but a hundred superfluous times. When

am I going to die ? This is a death in life.

^

I intended never to write in this diary
again. But the relief it affords could not
be refused any longer. I was surprised to
find I could scribble at all legibly. Yet it
is tiring.

March 26th, 1918. In reply to a query
from me if there were any fresh news in the
village this afternoon, my mother-in-law
thus (an obiter dictum, while dandling
the babe) : " No, not good news anyway.

G A LAST DIARY

Still, when there's a thorough assault, we're
bound to lose some. . . . Dancy, dancy,
poppity pin," etc.

But we are all moles, in cities as in villages,
burrowing blindly into the future. These
enormous prospects transcend vision ; we just
go on and go on following instinct, nursing
babies, and killing our enemies. How un-
speakably sorrowful the whole world is!
Poor men, killing each other. Murder, say,
of a rival in love, is comparatively a hallowed
thing because of the personal passion.
Liberty ? Freedom ? These are things of
the spirit. Every man is free if he will.
Yet who is going to lend an ear to the words
of a claustrated paralytic ? I expect I'm
wrong, and I am past hammering out what
is right. I must anaesthetise thought and
accept without comment. My mind is in an
agony of muddle, not only about this world
but the next.

A LAST DIARY 7

PUBLICATION OF THE JOURNAL

May 29th, 1918. This journal in part is
being published in September (D.V.). In
the tempest of misery of the past three
weeks, this fact at odd intervals has shone
out like a bar of stormy white light. By
September I anticipate a climax as a set-off
to the achievement of my book. Perhaps,
like Semele, I shall perish in the lightning I
long for !

My dear E. has had a nervous breakdown
her despairing words haunt me. Poor,
poor dear I cannot go on.

June 1st, 1918. A fever of impatience
and anxiety over the book. I am terrified
lest it miscarry. I wonder if it is being
printed in London ? A bomb on the
printing works ?

When it is out and in my hands I shall
believe. I have been out in a beautiful
lane where I saw a white horse, led by a
village child ; in a field a sunburnt labourer
with a black wide-brimmed hat lifted it,

8 A LAST DIARY

smiling at me. He seemed happy and I
smiled too.

Am immensely relieved that E. is better.
I cannot, cannot endure the prospect of
breaking her life and health. Dear woman,
how I love you !

Regard these entries as so many weals
under the lash.

June 3rd, 1918. When it is still scalding,
grief cannot be touched. But now after
twenty-five days, I look back on those
dreadful pictures and crave to tell the story.
It would be terrible. ... I scorn such
self-indulgence, for the grief was not mine
alone, nor chiefly, and I cannot desecrate
hers.

The extraordinary thing is that all this
has no effect on me. The heart still goes
on beating. I am not shrivelled.

June 15th, 1918. I get tired of these
inferior people drawn together to look after
me and my household. If, as to-day, 1
utter a witticism, they hastily slur it over
so as to resume the more quickly the flap-

A LAST DIARY 9

flap monotone of dull gossip. 1 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 experi-
ment : 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

10 A LAST DIARY

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.

MALIGNANT FATE

June 16th, 1918. I'm damned ; my ma-
lignant 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

A LAST DIARY 11

man, afraid of the injury to the firm's reputa-
tion 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 17th, 1918. 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
" Cceur simple."

July 1st, 1918. Turning out my desk I
found the other day :

12 A LAST DIARY

"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 vugue 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 LAST DIARY 13

a knowledge as possible. 1 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 every-
thing ; 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

14 A LAST DIARY

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.

FOUR WEEKS OF HAPPINESS

August 7th, 1918. In the cottage alone
with E. and nurse. Four weeks of happi-
ness 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, some-
one'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 15th, 1918. The Bishops are very
preocupied just now in justifying the ways
of God to man. I presume it an even
harder task to justify the ways of man

A LAST DIARY 15

to God. Why does not God stop the war ?
the people are asking so the Bishops com-
plain. 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 good-
ness 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 1st, 1918. 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

16 A LAST DIARY

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, 1 think, which span
little spaces.

A SPLENDID DREAM

September 2nd, 1918. It was a brilliantly
fine day to-day, with the great avenue of
blue sky and sunlight thro' groups of clouds

A LAST DIARY 17

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, bend-
ing 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 !

18 A LAST DIARY

September 3rd, 1918,-Passed by the
birches 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 4th, 1918. Still no news. I
have to reinforce all the strength of my soul
to be able to sit and wait day by day, im-
potent and idle and alone. . . .

GOODNESS THE CHIEF THING

September 7th, 1918. During the past
twelve months I have undergone an up-
heaval, and the whole bias of my life has gone
across from the intellectual to the ethical.
1 know that Goodness is the chief thing.

A LAST DIARY 19

THATCHING : A KODAK FILM

September 2kth, 1918. Two brown men
on a yellow round rick, thatching ; in the
background, a row of green elms ; above,
a windhover poised in mid-air ; perpendicu-
lar 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.

20 A LAST DIARY

September 25th, 1918. 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 for-
give me but I didn't find out anything.

EMILY BRONTE

September 26///, 1918. 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 be-
tween 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! 1
forgive you ! Forgive me !'

" * It is hard to forgive, and to look at

A LAST DIARY 21

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.

1 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. Wuther-
ing 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 com-

22 A LAST DIARY

paratively 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 Bronte, 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 !

RASKOLNIKOFF AND SONIA

October 4>th, 1918. 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

A LAST DIARY 23

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 teach-
ing the Sunday School children all about
hell.

October 5th, 1918. Some London neu-
rologist 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 resur-
rection 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

24 A LAST DIARY

put to sea again ! I am too tired now to
shoulder the burden of Hope again. This
chance, had itJbeen 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 mis-
fortune came, how could 1 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 2nd, 1918. 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

A LAST DIARY 25

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?~d to November 26th, 1918.
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 llth my newspaper never came at
all, and 1 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

26 A LAST DIARY

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 Eliza-
bethans. Civilisation in its present form is
ours to hold and to keep in perpetuity, for
better, for worse. There can be no mon-
strous deflection in its evolution at this late
period any more than we can hope to culti-
vate the pineal eye on top of our heads
useful as it would be in these days of
aeroplanes. But the chance is gone evolu-
tion 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

A LAST DIARY 27

things can never be - not in our time, any-
how ! 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 ex-
tinct.

We are now entered on the kingless
republican era. The next struggle, in some
ways more bitter and more protracted than
tins, 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 trans-
formation 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.

28 A LAST DIARY

THE OLD LADY SHOWS HER COINS

November 26th, 1918. 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
T?ipazz, 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 ot
George I. " Of course, they're all obsolute
now," she said. " What ! absolutely obso-
lute?" I enquired in surprise. The answer
was in the informative.

In spite of physical difficulties surround-
ing me in a mesh-work, I have now unaided
corrected my proofs in joyful triumph an
ecstatic conqueror up to the very end. I

A LAST DIARY 29

take my life in homoeopathic doses now. I
am tethered by but a single slender thread
curiosity to know what Mr. Wells says in
the Preface a little piece of vanity that
deserves to be flouted.

November 29t/i, 1918. O all ye people 1
the crowning irony of my life where is the
sacred oil? is my now cast-iron religious
convictions shortly summarised as Love
and Unselfishness. These, my moral code,
have captured the approval, not only of my
ethical but my intellectual side as well.
Undoubtedly, and dogmatically if you like,
a man should be unselfish for the good of
the soul and also to the credit of his
intellect. To be selfish is to imprison in a
tiny cage the glorious ego capable of pene-
trating to the farthest confines of the uni-
verse. As for love, it is an instinct and the
earnest, like all beauty, physical as well as
moral, of our future union into One. " One
loving heart sets another on fire." St.
Augustine (Confessions).

30 A LAST DIARY

December \st, 1918. What I have always
feared is coming to pass love for my little
daughter. Only another communication
string with life to be cut. I want to hear
"the tune of little feet along the floor." 1
am filled with intolerable sadness at the
thought of her. Oh ! forgive me, forgive me !

THE " PUGGILIST "

December 3rd, 1918. " My word ! you do
look a figure !" the old nurse exclaimed to
me to-day in the course of one of the
periodical tetanuses of all my muscles, when
the whole body is contorted into a rigid
tangle. " I shall never make a puggilist "
(the word is her own), I said.

I was rather impressed, though, for she is
one of those who, like Mr. Saddletree, I
believe, in The Heart of Midlothian, never
notice anything. She would not notice if
she came into my room, and I was standing
on my head as stiff as a ferule. " You may
observe," I should say, " I am standing

A LAST DIARY 31

upside down would you turn me round?"
" With pleasure," is her invariable reply to
every request I proffer.

VICTORY AT CHRISTMAS

December 23rd, 1918. It is strange to
hear all this thunderous tread of victory,
peace, and Christmas rejoicings above
ground, all muffled by the earth, yet quite
audible. They have not buried me deep
enough. Here in this vault all is un-
changed. It is bad for me, for, as to-day, a
faint tremor passes along my palsied limbs
a tremor of lust lust of life, a desire to
be up and mingling in the crowd, to be
soaked up by it, to feel a sense of all man-
kind flooding the heart, and strong mascu-
line youth pulsing at the wrists. I can
think of nothing more ennobling than the
sense of power, unity, and manhood that
comes to one in a sea of humanity, all
animated by the same motive to be sweep-

32 A LAST DIARY

ing folk off their feet and to be swept off
oneself; that is to be man, not merely Mr.
Brown.

DEATH

Christmas Day, 1918. Surely, I muse, a
man cannot be accounted a failure who
succeeds at last in calling in all his idle
desires and wandering motives, and with
utter restfulness concentrating his life on
the benison of Death. I am happy to think
that, like a pilot hard aport, Death is ready
at a signal to conduct me over this moaning
bar to still deep waters. After four years of
war, life has grown cheap and ugly, and
Death how desirable and sweet! Youth
now is in love with Death, and many are
heavy-hearted because Death flouts their
affection the maimed, halt, and blind.
How terrible if Life had no end !

With how splendid a zest the young
men flung themselves on Death like

A LAST DIARY 33

passionate lovers ! A magnificent slaughter
for indifference to Life is the noblest form
of unselfishness, and unselfishness is the
highest virtue.

Victurosque Dei celant ut vivere durent,
Felix esse mori. Lucan, with Sir Thomas
Browne's rendering :

We're all deluded, vainly searching ways
To make us happy by the length of days ;
For cunningly, to make 's protract this breath,
The gods conceal the happiness of death.

This mood, not permanent, but recurring
constantly, equals the happiness and comfort
of the drowning man when he sinks for the
third time. A profound compassion for my
dear ones and friends, and all humanity left
on the shore of this world struggling, fills
my heart. I want to say genially and per-
suasively to them as my last testament :
Why not die ? What loneliness under the
stars! It is only bland, unreflecting eupepsia
that leads poets to dithyrambs about the
heavenly bodies, and to call them all by
beautiful names. Diana ! Yet the moon

3

34 A LAST DIARY

is a menace and a terrible object-lesson.
Despite Blanco White, it were well if the
night had never revealed the stars to us.
Suppose a man with the swiftness of light
touring through the darkness and cold of
this great universe. He would pass through
innumerable solar systems and discover
plenty of pellets (like this earth, each
surging with waves of struggling life, like
worms in carrion). And he would tour
onwards like this for ever and ever. There
would be no end to it, and always he would
be discovering more hot suns, more cold and
blasted moons, and more pellets, and each
pellet would be in an internal fatuous dance
of revolutions, the life on it blind and
ignorant of all other life outside its own
atmosphere.

But out of this cul-de-sac there is one
glorious escape Death, a way out of Time
and space. As long as we go on living, we
are as stupid and as caged as these dancing
rats with diseased semicircular canals that
incessantly run round and round in circles.

A LAST DIARY 35

But if we be induced to remain in this cul-

/

de-sac, there is always an alleviative in
communication and communion with our
fellows. Men need each other badly in this
world. The stars are crushing, but mankind
in the mass is even above the stars how far
above, Death may show, perhaps to our
surprise.

But if I go on, I shall come round to the
conviction that life is beer and skittles.
Cheerio ! . . . This is not written in despair
" despair is a weakening of faith, hope in
God." But I am tired and in need of relief.
Death tantalises my curiosity, and some-
times I feel I could kill myself just to satisfy
it. But I agree that Death, save as the only
solution, is merely a funk-hole.

Boxing Day, 1918. James Joyce is my
man (in the Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man). Here is a writer who tells the truth
about himself. It is almost impossible to
tell the truth. In this journal I have tried,
but I have not succeeded. I have set down
a good deal, but I cannot tell it. Truth of

36 A LAST DIARY

self has to be left by the psychology-miner
at the bottom of his boring. Perhaps
fifty or a hundred years hence Posterity
may be told, but Contemporary will never
know. See how soldiers deliberately, from
a mistaken sense of charity or decency,
conceal the horrors of this war. Publishers
and Government aid and abet them. Yet a
good cinema film of all the worst and most
filthy and disgusting side of the war every-
one squeamish and dainty-minded to attend
under State compulsion to have their necks
scroffed, their sensitive nose-tips pitched into
it, and their rest on lawny couches disturbed
for a month after would do as much to
prevent future wars as any League of
Nations.

It is easy to reconcile oneself to man's
sorrows by shutting the eyes to them. But
there is no satisfaction in so easy a victory.
How many people have been jerry-building
their faith and creed all their lives by this
method ! One breath of truth and honest
self-dealing would blow the structure down

A LAST DIARY 37

like a house of cards. The optimist and
believer must bear in mind such things as
the C.C.S. described by M. Duhamel,
or this from M. Latzko's Men in
Battle :

" The captain raised himself a little, and
saw the ground and a broad dark shadow
that Weixler cast. Blood ? He was
bleeding ? Or what ? Surely that was
blood. It couldn't be anything but blood.
And yet it stretched out so peculiarly, and
drew itself up like a thin thread to Weixler,
up to where his hand pressed his body as
though he wanted to pull up the roots that
bound him to the earth.

" The captain had to see. He pulled his
head farther out from under the mound
and uttered a hoarse cry, a cry of infinite
horror. The wretched man was dragging
his entrails behind him."

The reviewer suggests that the book should
be read by school- children in every school in
the world ! I should like to take it (and I
hope it is large and heavy) and bring it down

38 A LAST DIARY

on the heads of the heartless, unimaginative
mob, who would then have to look at it, if
only to see what it was that cracked down
on their skulls so heavily.

Certainly Joyce has chosen the easier
method of transferring his truth of self to a
fictional character, thus avoiding recognition.
I have failed in the method urged by
Tolstoi in the diary of his youth : " Would
it not be better to say " (he asks), " ' This is
the kind of man I am ; if you do not like
me, I am sorry, but God made me so ' ? . . .
Let every man show just what he is, and
then what has been weak and laughable in
him will become so no longer." Tolstoi
himself did not live up to this. He con-
fessed to his diary, but he kept his diary to
himself. Some of my weaknesses I publish,
and no doubt you say at once "self-
advertisement." I agree more or less, but
believe egotism is a diagnosis nearer the
mark. I do not aspire to Tolstoi's ethical
motives. Mine are intellectual. I am the
scientific investigator of myself, and if , the

A LAST DIARY 39

published researches bring me into notice, I
am not averse from it, though interest in my
work comes first.

Did not Sir Thomas Browne say ever so
long ago : " We carry within us the wonders
we seek without us ; there is all Africa and
her prodigies in us ... "?

1919

1919

January 1st, 1919. My dear Arthur ! if
it's a boy, call him Andrew Chatto Windus.
Then perhaps the firm will give him a
royalty when he is published at the font.

My life here has quite changed its orienta-
tion. I am no longer an intellectual snob.
If I were. E. and I would have parted ere
now. I never liked to take her to the B.M.
(in my petty way) because there all the values
are intellectual.

I write this by candlelight in bed. In
the room above E. is in bed with 'flu. We
have had days of cold rain, and just now it
drips drearily off the roof, and the wind
blows drearily in gusts round the cottage as
if tired of blowing, and as , if blowing
prospects were nothing to be roaring
about.

43

44 A LAST DIARY

WILSON

President Wilson is my hero. I worship
him. I could ask him to stamp across my
prostrate body to save getting his feet wet
in a puddle. But I know nothing about him
save what I read in the Nation, and I don't
want to. Supposing I discovered traits . . . ?
I have had enough of disenchantment to last
me a lifetime. If he is not the greatest
figure in modern history, then there's no
money in Wall Street.

January 3rd, 1919. She taxes me with
indifference, says my sympathy is cold. By
God ! this is hard to bear. But she is so
desperate, she is lunging out right and
left at all. I fear for her mental balance.
What's going to happen to us ? Why does
everyone seem to have forsaken us ? Ah ! it
is almost too hard for me to bear. And I
can't break down. I am like ice. 1 can't
melt. I had a presentiment of evil awaiting
us about now. I don't know why, unless

A LAST DIARY 45

long experience of it produces a nose for it,
so that I can smell it in advance.

^January 4>t/i, 1919. I have talked of
being in love with one's own ruin, Bashkirt-
seff of liking to suffer, to be in despair.
Light, frivolous talk. At the most, such
moods are only short lulls between the
spasms of agony of suffering ; one longs to
be free of them as of acute physical, pain, to
be unconscious. I look forward to night,
to darkness, rest, and sleep. I sleep well
between twelve and six and then watch the
dawn, from black (and the owl's hoot) to
grey (and the barncock's crow) to white (and
the blackbirds' whistle). The oak beam on
my ceiling, the Japanese print on the wall
come slowly into view, and I dread them.
I dread the day with my whole soul. Each
dawn is hopeless. Yes, it is true, they have
not buried me deep enough. I don't think I
am buried at all. They have not even taken
me down from the tree. And my wife they
are just nailing up. I can never forget,
wherever I may be, in Heaven or Hell, her

46 A LAST DIARY

figure in dressing-gown and shawl drawn up
erec t but swaying because she is so weak
before me at the fireside (she had just been
bending over me and kissing me, hot cheeks
and hot tears that mingled and bound us
together to that moment for ever), her head
tilted towards the ceiling, and her poor face
looking so ill and screwed up as she half-
whispered : " Oh, God ! it's so hopeless."
I think that picture is impressed even on the
four walls of the room, its memory is
photographed on the air to haunt those who
may live here in the time to come. I said :
"Fight it out, dear. Don't give in. I
believe in a personal devil. The human
spirit is unconquerable. You'll come
through if you fight." It was but a few
weeks ago that she came home one evening,
dug out from a drawer her beautiful dance
dress, got into it, and did a pas seul for my
pleasure round the little cottage room.
That ogre Fate was drawing out her golden
wing and mocking her loss of liberty. Ah !
the times we intended to have together !

A LAST DIARY 47

January 8th, 1919. I lie stiff and con-
torted till Nurse arrives at nine- thirty. She
straightens me out and bolsters me up.
Breakfast at nine. Cigarettes while I listen
with ravenous ears for the postman. No
letter for me, then plop right down into the
depth among the weeds and goblins of the
deep sea for an hour. There usually is no
letter for me.

My chief discovery in sickness and mis-
fortune is the callousness of people to our
case not from hard-heartedness (everyone
is kind), but from absence of sympathetic
imagination. People don't know the horrors
and they can't imagine them perhaps they
are unimaginable. You will notice how
suicides time and again in farewell notes to
their closest and dearest have the same
refrain, " I don't believe even you can realise
all I suffer." Poor devil ! of course not.
Beyond a certain point, suffering must be
borne alone, and so must extreme joy. Ah !
we are lonely barks.

January I3t/i, 1919. All the postman

48 A LAST DIARY

brought me to-day was an income-tax

form!

Last night Nurse (having put me back
to bed). Shall I shut up your legs ?

B. No, thank you. They've been bent
up all the evening, and it's a relief to have
them out straight.

Later B. Before you go you might
uncross my legs.

(She pulls bed-clothes back, seizes my
feet, one in each hand, and forces them
apart, chanting humorously : " Any scissors
to grind ?" As I have pointed out to her,
the sartorius muscle, being on the inside of
* the thigh and stronger than the others, has
the effect of crossing my legs when a tetanic
spasm occurs.)
^ N. There, good-night.

B. And a good-night to you.

N. I'll come in first thing in the morning.

[Exit.

I lie on my back and rest awhile. Then
I force myself on to the left side by putting
my right arm over the left side of the bed

A LAST DIARY 49

beneath the wood-work and pulling (my>
right arm is stronger than any of the other
limbs). To-night, Nurse had not placed me
in the middle of the bed (I was too much
over on the right side), so even my long arm
could not reach down beneath the wood-
work on the left. I cursed Nanny for a
scabby old bean, struggled, and at last got
over on my left side. The next thing was
to get my legs bent up now out as stiff
and straight as ferrules. When lying on the
left side I long ago found out that it is
useless to get my right leg up first, as it only
shoots out again when I come to grapple
with the left. So I put my right arm down,
seized the left leg just above the knee and
pulled ! The first result is always a violent
spasm in the legs and back. But I hang on
and presently it dies away, and the leg
begins to move upward a little. Last night
Nanny uncrossed my legs, but was not
careful to separate them. Consequently,
knee stuck side by side to knee, and foot to
foot, as if glued, and I found, in pulling at my

4,

50 A LAST DIARY

left, I had the stubborn live weight of both
to lift up. I would get them part way, then
by a careless movement of the hand on a
ticklish spot both would shoot out again.
So on for an hour my only relief to curse
Nanny.

And thus, any time, any week, these
last eighteen months. But I have faith
and hope and love in spite of all. I forgive
even Nanny !

January 19th, 1919. The situation is
eased. E. is at Brighton for a change, and
has P. with her (she came up from Wales
with the nurse after seven months' visit).
But I am heartsore and unhappy.

January 20th, 1919. If 1 were to sum
up my life in one word I should say
suffocation. 'R. has been my one blow-
hole. Now I look forward to a little
oxygen when my Journal is published ! I
am delighted and horrified at the same
time. What will my relatives say ? 'Twill
be the surprise of their lives. I regard it as
a revanche. The world has always gagged

A LAST DIARY 51

and suppressed me now I turn and hit it
in the belly.

January 22?id, 1919. Am now lodging
alone under one roof with Nanny ! Makes
me think of some of Sterne's adventures in
the Sentimental Journey, only I must shut
my eyes very tight to see the likeness and
imagine very hard. This is a selection from
last night's conversation (remember she is
deaf, old, and obstinate ; she t hates to
be instructed or corrected ; hence her
ignorance and general incapacity) :

ORNITHOLOGY

N. I think a sparrow out at the back has
young birds, by the way she carries off the
food.

B. It's too early for young sparrows.
A sparrow is too worldly wise to encumber
himself with a young family in January, or
in February or March for that matter.

N. I've seen young sparrows in March.

B. Why didn't you write to the papers
about it ?

52 A LAST DIARY

N. There wasn't so much writing to the
papers in my days. But there were things
I could have written about. Young
plovers, for example, I used to catch and
hold in my lap. You know the plover?
It's called the lapwing sometimes ; only a
few young at a time

B. Four.

N. Yes. Now Charlie used to show me
partridges' nests with as many as twenty-
four.

B. Yes, but laid probably by more than
one hen.

N. Charlie L "id it was all one bird. The
prettiest nest lie ever showed me was a
greenfinch's.

B. What was that like ?

N. It was swung underneath the bough
of a fir-tree right at the end.

B. That was not a greenfinch's.

N. Well, Charlie said it was, and he
showed it to all, of us ; we all saw it.

B. It was the nest of a goldcrest.

N. Yes ? Charlie had a wonderful col-

A LAST DIARY 53

lection of eggs. He could name them all,
and labelled the names on them. They
would cover the table when all set out.

B.-^-Yes ?

N. Oh, I forgot, another nest he showed
me a kingfisher's.

B._ What was that like ?

N. It was right down among some reeds
of a stream.

B. What were the eggs like ?

N. There were no eggs in it when I saw
it. Another pretty

B. That was not a kingfisher's nest. A
kingfisher nests at the end of a hole in the

JJ^J

bank of,the stream.

N. Charlie said it was. Another pretty
nest was the robin's.

B. The prettiest nest of all, I think, is
the long-tailed tit's.

N. Oh, yes, I know that.

B. What's it like ?

N. I can't recollect.

B. All arched over with sticks and lined
with green leaves ?

54 A LAST DIARY

N. Oh, yes.

I suspect " Charlie" (whoever he was)
could not tell a hawk from a handsaw, even
when the wind was southerly. Now what a
stupid old woman not to make better use
of me!

January 23rd, 1919. Have been sustain-
ing a hell of tedium by reading a sloppy
nove l_sentimental mucilage called Con-
rad in Quest of His Youth, which sent me
in quest of mine. 1 see now that my youth
was over before I came to London. For
never after did I experience such electric

tremors of joy and fear as, e.g., over .

As a small boy I knew her, and always
lifted my hat. But one day at the age of
sixteen, with a heart like nascent oxygen
(though I did not know it), I lifted my hat
and, in response to her smile, fell violently
in love. During country rambles I liked to
pause and carve her initials on the bark of a
tree. It pleased me to confide my burning
secret to the birds and wild things. I knew
it was safe in their keeping. And I always

A LAST DIARY 55

hoped she might come along one day and
see the letters there, and feel curiosity, yet
she couldn't find out. ... I daresay they
are still legible in places, some of them of
exquisite rural beauty ; though the letters
themselves probably now look obscured and
distorted by the evergrowing bark, the trees
and locality doubtless are still as beautiful :

" Upon a poet's page I wrote
Of old two letters of her name ;
Part seemed she of the effulgent thought
Whence that high singer's rapture came.
When now I turn the leaf the same
Immortal light illumes the lay,
But from the letters of her name
The radiance has waned away."

For a whole year I was in agony, meeting
her constantly in the town, but never daring
to stop and speak. I used to return home
after a short cap-lifting encounter with an
intolerable ache that I did not understand.
Even in subsequent miseries I do not
believe I suffered mental pain equal to this
in acuteness. I used to lift my cap to her
in the High Street, then dart down a side-

56 A LAST DIARY

street and around, so as to meet her again,
and every time I met her came a raging
stormy conflict between fear and desire. I
wanted to stop my heart always failed me.
How I cursed myself for a poltroon the
very next moment !

I always haunted all the localities park,
concerts, skating-rink where I thought to
see her. In church on Sundays I became
electrified if she was there. One afternoon
at a concert in company with my sister, I
determined on a bold measure : I left .before
it was over saw my sister home, and at
once darted back to the hall and met my
paragon coming out. She was with her
friend (how I hated her!) and her friend's
mother (how I feared her !) I was seven-
teen, she was seventeen, and of ravishing,
virginal beauty. I spoke. I said (obviously):
" How did you enjoy the concert ?"

While the other two walked on, she
replied "Very much." That was all. I
could think of nothing more, so I left her,
and she rejoined her friends. It had been a

A LAST DIARY 57

terrible nervous strain to me. At the crucial
second my nose twitched and I felt my face
contorted. But I walked home on air and
my soul sang like a bird. It was the beau-
tiful rhapsody of a boy. There was nothing
carnal in it. Indeed, the poor girl was
idealised aloft into something scarcely
human. But that at the moment of speak-
ing to her I was in the power of an unpre-
cedented emotion is obvious if I write that
neither before nor after has anything ever
caused facial twitching. It is evidence of
my ardour and youth.

Our acquaintance remained tenuous for
long. I was shy and inexperienced. I was
too shy to write. I heard rumours that she
was staying by the sea, so I went down and
wandered about to try to see her. In vain.
I went down another day, and it began to
pour with rain. So I spent all my time
sheltering under doorways and shop awn-
ings, cursing my luck, and groaning at the
waste of my precious time. " There was a
large halibut on a fishmonger's stall," I

58 A LAST DIARY

posted in my diary, "but not caught, I
think, off this coast." Then follows ab-
ruptly :

" A daughter of the gods she walked,
Divinely tall, and most divinely fair."

I bought a local paper in the High Street,
and, examining the " Visitors' List," I went
through hundreds of names, and at the end
saw " The most recent arrivals will be found
on page 5." I turned to page 5 and found
nothing there. I complained to the
manager. " Ah, yes, I know, an unfor-
tunate oversight, sir. If you will leave
your name and address, I will see it appears
in next week's issue." I felt silly, and
slunk off, saying : " Oh, never mind. I
don't care much about it."

" It is the more worrying to me because
I know

(1) It is wasting good time.

(2) A common occurrence to others, and
they all get over it.

(3) There is no comfort in study or
reading. Knowledge is dull and dry.

A LAST DIARY 59

Poetry seems to me to be more attrac-
tive."

Then immediately follows a description
of a ring snake with notes on its anatomy.
Then a few days later : " Have not seen my
beloved all the week. Where on earth has
she been hiding herself?" And again: "I
cannot hope ever to see more wonderful
eyes of the richest, sweetest brown-amber,
soft, yet bright." At length we became
friends, wrote letters to one another (her
first one was an event), and went for walks.

Of course, the next stage was kissing her.
It took me over another twelve months to
kiss her. I must have been close on nine-
teen. We had been walking in the woods
all the afternoon, then had tea in the garden
tea-rooms. We sat in the green arbour till
after dark. I was in a terrible state. Rest-
lessness and fever were exhausting me.
Desire struggled with pride. What if she
smacked my face? Then I lit a cigarette
for her (I used to buy her little heliotrope
boxes of cigarettes labelled in gold " My

60 A LAST DIARY

Darling"). Greatly daring, I put my left
arm round her neck, and holding the match-
box, struck a light and kissed her at the
same moment. She said, " I ought not to
let you really," quite calm. I was in too
much of a turmoil to answer, but kissed her
again.

I kissed her many times after that. One
wet afternoon we had spent kissing in a
linhay by a country lane. Coming home,
we met her sister's baby, and she stopped to
lean over the pram, and crow. This irritated
me, and I strolled on. " Do you like
babies ?" I asked when she came up. " Yes,"
she answered, " do you ?" " Not much,"
said I with dryness, and changed what I felt
to be almost an indelicate subject. After
all, a baby is only a kiss carried to a rational
conclusion, in natural sequence, sometimes
arithmetical, sometimes geometrical. It de-
pends on the length of the engagement.

But it was curious how this kissing
destroyed my ideal. I soon knew I was
not in love. With callous self-possession I

A LAST DIARY 61

was investigating a new sensation, and found
it very enjoyable. " 1 kiss you" I said to
her one night in the park, " but you never
kiss me." She at once gave me a passionate
token on my lips, and having exacted thus
much tribute, I sank into complacency, self-
adulation, and, ultimately, indifference. I
had been surcharged. The relief was too
complete. After exchanging impassioned
verses (oh, such tosh !), each other's photo-
graphs, and plenty of letters, my romance
died a natural death. My agony and sweat
became a trifle, and one I wished to blot
from my memory out of boyish sense of
shame.

Doubtless I broke her heart. She had
left the town, when one morning I received
a last pathetic appeal. I remember now
the nausea that love-letter caused me. 1
put it on the fire, and thought, " Heavens
what a fool the girl is !" In 1913 I met her
again, and had the effrontery to go to her
home and have dinner with her people.
(See May 31st and June 3rd, 1913.)

62 A LAST DIARY

Now, in my old age, I like to gaze back
on this flashing gem of youth. It still
reflects the light, and she is a princess
again. "Love in the Valley" becomes a
personal memory instead of someone else's
poem.

Ah ! what a heart I had in those days !
a nascent oxygen with an affinity for every
pretty girl who smiled at me. I fell in
love with a post-office girl, a silversmith's
daughter, a grocer's daughter, the daughter

of a judge. For months I worshipped ,

and bought every kind of photograph of
her. But I've never seen her in my life,
and now she's Dead Sea fruit. I had never
set eyes on any beautiful women until 1
came to London. Then I was dazzled by
them all in every rank or station, in the
street or on the street, in the Cafe de
1'Europe or the Cafe Royal pretty, laugh-
ing girls, handsome women, or beautiful
pieces of mere flesh only. ... I was
doomed to destruction from the first. If
I had not developed disease, if I had

A LAST DIARY 63

come up from the country a healthy, lusty
youth, I must soon have got on the rocks.
Now that the blood is slow, it is difficult to
recall the anguish. That I only succumbed
twice is a marvel to me and a joy. My
situation at one time was fraught with dire
possibilities. My secret life was a tumult.
I never went skylarking with jaunty pals in
the West End. I crept along the streets
alone ... all this time I was alone, in
dirty diggings, by myself. I am consumed
with self-pity at the thought.

I cannot understand how saints like
Augustine and Tolstoi confess how they
went with women in their youth, but recall
no sense of nausea. They just deplore their
moral lapse. When St. Augustine's mother
enjoined him never to lie with his neighbour's
wife, he laughed at the advice as womanish !

For myself, I never received any parental
instruction. I first learned of the wonder
of generation through the dirty filter of a
barmaid's nasty mind.

I remember telling me in sardonic

64 A LAST DIARY

vein that the only advice his father ever
gave him on leaving home was to keep his
bowels open. The present generation has
altered all that.

Birds' eggs were another electrifying
factor in my youth. I can remember
tramping to and fro all one warm June
afternoon over a bracken- covered sandy
waste, searching for a nightjar's eggs. H.
and I quartered out the ground systematic-
ally, till presently, after two hours' search,
the hen goat-sucker flipped up at my feet
and fluttered away like a big moth across
the silvery bracken out of sight. Lying
before me on the ground were two long,
grey eggs, marbled like pebbles. I turned
away from this intoxicating vision, flicking
my fingers as if I had been bitten. Then I
turned, approached slowly, and gloated.

It was just such an effect on me as a
girl's beautiful face used to make equally
tantalising and out of reach. I stared,
fingered them, put one to my lips. Then
it was over. I had to leave them, and an

A LAST DIARY 65

equal thrill at goat-suckers' eggs could
never return again.

THE COTTAGE ON THE SHORE

January 24>th, 1919. It was as mysterious
as Stevenson's Pavilion on the Links. For a
long time I never noticed any indication of
its being inhabited, save a few chickens at
the back which no one seemed to feed. I
could see it from miles around, as it was situ-
ated in a desolate, treeless waste, thousands
of acres of marshes and duckponds (known
as the Mires) on the one side, and on the
other a wilderness of sandy links and sand-
hills swarming with rabbits (known as the
Burrows}. Immediately in front, the
waters of a broad tidal estuary came up
almost to the door during spring tides.
The nearest human habitation was the
lighthouse, a mile away round the corner
on the sands near the harbour bar. In my
rambles in search of bird or beast, I used
occasionally, while eating sandwiches at

66 A LAST DIARY

midday on a sandhill top, to turn my field-
glasses on the cottage idly. For long I
saw no one. Then one spring, while
thousands of lapwings circled above my
head, calling indignantly at me " Little
boo-oy," and larks dotted the blue sky
everywhere in little white-hot needle-points
of song, I saw a tiny man a manikin
come out of this tiny cottage a doll's
house and throw some corn to the chickens.
He was three miles away, and by the time
that I arrived at the cottage, the little man
had disappeared. It was a little four-roomed
cottage, with no path leading up to it, no
garden, no enclosure, only a few hardy
shrubs to keep the sandy soil from drifting.
For a long time I never saw him again, and
began to think he had been an hallucination.
But the desolate cottage was still there and
the chickens were still alive, so they must
have been fed. Then one day I ran up
against him on the Mires, and we exchanged
greetings. He was a round, tubby, short
man with a stubble of beard. Devon folk

A LAST DIARY 67

would have called him bungy, stuggy. His
face bore a ludicrous resemblance to the
monkey in the " Monkey Brand " advertise-
ment, only fatter and rounder. We dis-
cussed birds (he was the gamekeeper) and
became fast friends. He would take me
the round of his duckponds, and sometimes
he sent me a postcard when there were
wild swans or geese " in over," or when he
had discovered a " stranger " on his water.

But this did not dispel the mystery of
the cottage. For he had a woman inside
whose presence was never suspected until I
had occasion to knock at the door. There
was no answer and no sound. All the
windows were shut. I knocked again, and
heard a distant noise. Then there were
long, preparatory noises, as ii someone were
climbing up from an underground cellar or
cave, or wandering down a long, dark
passage. Bolts were drawn (and powerful
enough they sounded to make fast a port-
cullis), and I watched the door opening
with curiosity ; a tall, fat, middle - aged

68 A LAST DIARY

woman stood there blinking at me like an
owl unaccustomed to daylight. Her eyes
were weak blue, and her face puffy and red.
" Oh ! is Fedder about ?" I enquired.
Without changing a muscle of her face,
she replied mechanically :

" No, but Fedder said if the young
gentleman called, I was to say that the
shovellers brought off their brood all right."
I thanked her and departed, as she was
obviously embarrassed. In her moping
countenance, I detected a startled look
Robinson Crusoe, as it were, discovering
Friday all at once without any advertising
Friday. I heard her bolting the door again,
as I strolled off down by the waterside to
examine, the tide-wrack. It was almost
eerie to hear the cackle of herring gulls
overhead. They seemed to be laughing at
the stupidity of human nature.

There are some things the imagination
boggles at. For example, what did that
woman in that desolate cottage do ? What
did she think about ? What were her

A LAST DIARY 69

wants, her grievances ? Where were her
relatives ? Did she ever love, or want little
babies ? Did murder stories interest her at
all ? Drugs ? That is an easy explanation
to j ump at som e horrible vice. Theatrical.
In reality I should have found, I expect, the
answer would be just nothing at all. She
did nothing, thought nothing, perhaps only
feared a little, so she always bolted the door
and hid herself away. I suppose if one saw
nothing bigger than a kingplover or a seagull
during the twelve months, and heard no
noises other than the trumpet of wild
swans and the cries of Fedder's wild fowl, a
tall man six feet high, with a voice like a
human being's, must seem a little dis-
concerting.

January 26tk, 1919. Here is some
arithmetic which ought to please me. But
it doesn't. 1 wrote :

12 papers in the Zoologist in the years
1905-1910; 6 in the P.Z.S. (1912-
1916) ; 7 in the Annals and Magazine

70 A LAST DIARY

of Natural History (1912-1916) ; 3
in Bulletin of Entomological Research ;
2 B.M. pamphlets, in addition to 18
literary efforts (some in newspapers
and some not published), and other
old scientific papers in different
periodicals such as British Birds, the
Journal of Animal Behaviour, etc.
In all 65 publications.

Further, in my locker lie :

6 unpublished literary MSS.

17 volumes of Journal post quarto, pre-
war Is. thickness.

12 smaller volumes written in boyhood.

6 volumes (post quarto Is.) of abstracted
entries from the Journal.

2 post quarto volumes of abstract,
abstracted from the volumes of
abstract for publication purposes.

In vulgar parlance, cacoethes scribendi.
January 27th, 1919. Have you ever
considered what a fever of anticipation

A LAST DIARY 71

must be raging in me as I sit by the fire,
day after day, awaiting the constantly
delayed publication of this my Journal ; how
I strain to hold it, to smell the fresh ink, to
hear the binding crackle as I open it out,
and above all to read what one of the fore-
most literary men thinks about me and my
book.

I wait with head on the block for my
child to be brought to receive my farewell
blessings.

Will it come in time ? I nearly died last
month of 'fiu, and get worse almost daily. I
am running a neck-and-neck race up the
straight with my evil genius on the black
horse. It is touch and go who wins ; and if
I do, I expect some horrible forfeit will be
exacted of me, a penalty will have to be
paid lese - majeste for my audacity in
challenging the stars in their courses and
defeating them.

My life has certainly been an astonishing
episode in human story. To me, it appears
as a titanic struggle between consuming

72 A LAST DIARY

ambition and adverse fortune. Behold a
penniless youth thirsting for knowledge intro-
duced into the world out of sheer devilment,
hundreds of miles from a university, with a
towering ambition, but cursed with ill-health
and a twofold nature pleasure-loving as
well as labour -loving. The continuous,
almost cunning frustration of my endeavours
long ago gave me a sense of struggle with
some evil genius. Think of the elaborate
precautions I took of my MSS. during the
air-raids! I saw each bomb labelled
" Barbellion's contemptible ambition."
Consider the duplication of abstracts 1
saw an army of housemaids prowling round
to throw them on the fire after Carlyle's
French Revolution. I have been consciously
contesting with an incendiary, a bomber
from Hunland, a wicked housemaid, a whole
world of wicked folk, in league with a
hostile spirit decided on killing and obliter-
ating me and my ambition a grotesque
couple, a monkey astride a hippogriff,
an ass with a Jabberwock! True, he has

A LAST DIARY 73

ruined me ; yet the struggle is not over.
With demoniac determination, I am
getting on still, crawling on all fours, with
the dagger between my teeth. I am
mauled, battered, scorched, but not slain.
The dagger I hope to see published
by Messrs. Chatto and Windus next
month.

You can search all history and fiction
for an ambition more powerful than mine
and not find it. No, not Napoleon, nor
Wilhelm II, nor Keats. No, I am not proud
of it, not at all. The wonder is that I
remain sane, the possessed of such a demon.
I am sane or I could not make fun of it as
I do. Ah ! my God ! it is a ridiculous
weakness, but the leopard cannot change
his spots, and I feel just as hopelessly
spotty as a leopard.

January 2Sth, 1919. " The rest is
silence" I should like this inscribed at
the end of this garrulous Journal, an in-
scription for the base of my self-erected
monument.

74 A LAST DIARY

ROWBOTHAM, THE MODERN HoMEtt

January 30th, 1919. The Human Epic ;
The Twelfth Epic Poem of the World; The
Story of the Universe and Prehistoric Man;
The Vanished Continent in the Atlantic;
The Ice Age ; The Anemones, Corals, and
Population of the Primeval Ocean (" These
latter cantos have been made the subject of
interesting lectures "- The Bard); Other
Epics by Eowbotham, the Modern Homer ;
God and the Devil; The Swiss Lake
Dwellers; The Epic of the Empire;
London; Charlemagne. Each Epic 2s. 6d.
Foyle, 121, Charing Cross Road.

Who is "The Bard"? What a safe
remark to make about the anemones and
corals! Who is Rowbotham ? I wish
someone would lecture to me on him.
What are the " other epics of the world "?
The twelfth has the suggestion of quack
verse sold as a green liquid from a four-
wheeled vehicle at a country fair. But I
can't run to 2s. 6d., though I ache to read
and know you, O Rowbotham ! Rowbotham,

A LAST DIARY 75

the late Mr. Homer, I suppose. Say, though,
who is this Rowbotham ?

Snow lies on the ground outside. All the
morning it was too dark in my vault to read.
Even had it been light, my eyesight had
become temporarily too deranged for me to
see the print. Had my eyes been all right,
it was so cold that I had to keep my hands
under the bedclothes.

All the afternoon I dozed. In the even-
ing I sat by the fire and read Urn-burial.
During the day, at long intervals, Nanny
comes in, and I shout out fatuities e.g.,
" Still snowing," or " Colder than ever."

There are some days when I give up,
surrender voluntarily every earthly desire,
when every thread binding me to life is cut.
I long to be free, and hack and cut in a
frenzy frenzies in which I curse and swear
out loud to myself, alternating with fits
* of terrible apathy, when I am indifferent to
everything and everybody, when the petty
routine of my existence, washing, eating,
and sitting out, goes on and carries me along

76 A LAST DIARY

with it mechanically. And I wonder all
the time why on earth I trouble about it.
I look at human life and human affairs with
inhuman detachment, yet not from the side
of the angels. 1 am neither one thing nor
the other, neither dead nor alive, a nonde-
script creature in a No-Man's Land, and,
like all who keep a middle course, not
claimed with any enthusiasm by either side.
The living must be tired of me, and the
dead don't seem eager for my reception.
Yet I must go somewhere, and by heavens !
I will not choose willingly, God knows,
the bare heath of this world. The bare
bodkin is an alluring symbol to lonely
paralytics, meaning liberty, fraternity, peace.
Ever since I came into it, I have felt an
alien in this life a refugee by reason of
some pre-natal extradiction. I always felt
alien to my father and mother. I was
different from them. I knew and was
conscious of the detachment. They seemed
the children and I was a very old man.
My father's youth, which continued to

A LAST DIARY 77

flower past middle-age and in the midst
of adversity and terrible affliction, and his
courage and happiness of soul I admired
greatly. But we were very far from one
another. I was proud and irritable. My
mother I loved, and she loved us all with an
instant love and tenderness such as I have
never seen in any mother since. I did not
realise this at the time, alas ! Her love
helped to wear her out. She never parted
from me for however short a period with-
out tears tears certainly of weakness
especially later, of sheer inability to stand
steady any longer against the bufferings of a
hard lot. But we had little in common. I
was a queer duckling, self-willed and de-
termined at the water's edge, heedless of her
frantic " clucks." Dear soul ! " If you be-
have so," she would warn me sorrowfully,
" no one, you know, will like you when you
go out into the world." " I don't care," I
would answer. " I don't want them to like
me. I shan't like them. Theirs would be
the greater loss." Ours was a family not

78 A LAST DIARY

uncommon I imagine, at any time in
which the parents were under the tolerant
surveillance and patronage of the children.

I was a little alien among my school-
fellows. I knew I was different, and accepted
my ostracism as a quite natural consequence.
I never played games with them, but after
afternoon school hurried home, gobbled
down an early tea (prepared for me in the
kitchen by Martha), and went off on a long
solitary ramble till nightfall (and later
sometimes), through orchards of very old
crooked trees ; the air reeking of garlic or
humming with the scoldings of tits whose
nests I was after in the holes in trees ;
through gorse-covered thickets, over streams,
in woods, disturbing the game I went
across country, avoiding lanes, roads, and
footpaths as if they were God-forsaken.

I never entered into any intimacy with
my masters. They and the boys regarded
me quizzically with a menacing " Now then,
Barbellion, where are you sloping off to ?"
I would flush, and parry with them with

A LAST DIARY 79

"I've got to be home early to-night." It
was a'lie. I knew it was a lie. They knew
it was a lie. But I presented such an
invertebrate, sloppy, characterless exterior,
that no one felt curious enough to probe
further into my way of life. And I was
content to leave it at that.

It was the same in London. I was alien
to my colleagues and led a private life,
totally outside their imaginings. Among
them only R., dear fellow, has ventured to
approach my life, and seek a communion
with me. And I can't believe he has
suffered any hurt. I am not a live wire.
Now at all events my power station is dis-
mantled, my career a cinder-path. I wish
1 could think that others who have come
near me are similarly immune. My wife
and child seem at a remote distance from
me. Strange to say, I am calmer in mind
when they are away, as now. Would that
they could go on with their lives as if I had
never been. E. is a dear woman. I love
her, and she, I hope, loves me a little. She

80 A LAST DIARY

is my wife, and it is my child, and my
dreamy ineffectual existence, poised between
earth and heaven, cannot annul the physical
contact. They may be dream figures, but
1 created them, and am responsible. For-
give me, forgive me, and try to think well of
me. I am weak, and this great universe is a
bully. This disease has weakened the fibre
of my life. Existence blows me about any-
where. I am possessed by any idle devil
who cares to take me, give me a shake, and
pass on: forebodings and evil visions,
imaginary pictures of horrible accidents,
cataclysms, fears fears that the earth may
drop into the sun.

February 3rd, 1919. Suffering does not
only insulate. It drops its victim on an
island in an ocean desert where he sees men
as distant ships passing. I not only feel
alone, but very far away from you all. But
what is my suffering? Not physical pain.
1 have none. Pain brings clusters of one's
fellows a toothache is intelligible. But
when I say I am grown tired of myself,

A LAST DIARY 81

have outlived myself, am unseasonable
and "mopy" like a doomed swallow in
November, it is something that requires a
John Galsworthy to understand. The world
to me is but a dream or mock show ; and we
all therein but Pantalones and Anticks to
my severe contemplations. This used to be
a transitory impression that amused my
curiosity. But it hurts and bewilders now
that it has become the permanent com-
plexion on my daily existence, when I long
for real persons and real things. Tinsel and
pictures are melancholy substitutes to any-
one heart-hungry for the touch of real hands,
and the sound of real voices. Acute mental
pain at intervals seizes me with pincers and
casts me helpless into the whirlpool it may
be E.'s despair, or the failure to find a home
for me to go to. But these are spasms of
reality, the momentary opening and closing
of a shutter on Life. As soon as they are
over, I at once relapse into the dull monotone
of misery and picture-show.

I have not left my room since Novem-

82 A LAST DIARY

her llth. I eat well, sleep well, am in
possession of all my higher faculties those
for feeling and thinking. But I can't get out.

I think sometimes folk do not come to
see me because I am such a gruesome object.
It is not pleasant to feel you are gruesome.
I have outstayed my welcome. I know
everyone will be relieved to hear of my death
no doubt for my sake, as they will eagerly
point out, but also for their own sake, as I
believe. Yet now and then in selfish and
ignoble moods, I, being an egotist, fancy I
would like some loving hands to clutch at
me, in a blind, ineffectual effort to save me in
any condition, if only alive.

February 4,th, 1919. The last part of
yesterday's entry was maudlin tosh entirely
foreign to my nature. I hereby cancel it.

THE DAY'S LIFE

I woke at seven, when my desk, the
Japanese print on the wall, the wooden
chair with my basin on it, the chest of

A LAST DIARY 83

drawers were emerging out of a grey ob-
scurity. I had tetanuses of my legs (which
alternately shot out straight and contracted
up to my chin) till eight-thirty, when Nanny
came in and drew the blinds, letting in a
foggy light. It is bitterly cold. I hear
noises in the kitchen a dull mewing sound
(this is the tap being turned on), then a
scrape, scrape (she is buttering my toast).

Then breakfast arrives (two pieces of toast
and two cups of tea), for which I am set up
in bed with pillows. Through the window
on my left I can see the branch of a walnut-
tree and beyond, a laurel. The little ,squares
of ancient glass are so loosely fixed in the
leads (one is broken and covered over with
a piece of cardboard) that the draught pours
through and sometimes makes wind enough
to blow out my match for a cigarette. As
I eat comes a heavy scrunch, scrunch, right
up the front door, which is only a few feet
away from me, concealed behind a curtain.
It is the postman, who puts the letters in the
porch, gives a resounding knock, and goes

84 A LAST DIARY

away again. As I smoke my cigarette
there is another scrunch, scrunch, but this
one goes round to the back door. There
is a hammering on the door (they all know
Nanny is deaf) and I hear a rough, throaty
voice, saying, " Nearly copped him that
time," and Nanny replying, " Yes, 'tis cold
this morning." It is the newspaper man,
who always shies hali>a brick at a rat that
haunts our garden.

While reading the Daily News I hear
every now and then a distant rattle, which
comes nearer, increases to a roar and passes
off again in a furious rattle of sound it is a
motor-car along the Oxford Road. Then
I hear the clock at the Manor strike twelve,
sparrows chattering, or a scolding tit in the
garden.

Presently a smell of dinner comes through
from the kitchen, and while it cooks, N.
comes in with the hot water and helps me
to wash. All the afternoon I sleep or doze.
At four-thirty I get up, by a little careful
arrangement get into my wheeled chair, and

A LAST DIARY 85

am taken to the fireside. My legs having
shot out in a tetanus meanwhile, they have
to be bent up before I can climb into my
armchair. As soon as I have tricked
myself into the chair they shoot out again,
and have to be bent up, and feet placed on
the hot bottle.

Then tea ! N. sits opposite a short, fat
little woman, who always on all occasions
wears large black boots, which she says are
necessary on account of her varicose veins.
Her white apron above the waist is decorated
with an embroidered design a large red " O "
with green leaves around it. She always
eats with her mouth open, otherwise, I
suspect, she has discovered the noise of her
mastication drowns every other sound.

After tea I read Gogol. After supper,
Gogol. Then, my eyes aching, I stop and
gaze into the fire. Nanny reads me a lot of
funny stories out of Answers. I listen with
a set smile, still gazing into the fire. I do
not mind in the least, for to me it is all a
mock show. Then came a biographical

80 A LAST DIARY

study of Charlie Chaplin his early struggles,
his present tastes and habits, what his
Japanese chauffeur said of him (in the pidgin
English of a Chinaman), his favourite holiday
retreat, how he reads voraciously and always
carries with him when he travels a trunk full
of books (ah ! my God, it did not give their
titles !), etc. There was a ridiculous likeness
in all this to a " critique " of, say, George
Moore in the Bookman. It aroused my
slumbering brain. It interested me. (N. was
absorbed.) This flashlight into a strange
new world where the life, thoughts, habits
of Mr. Chaplin were of transcendent interest
recalled me to reality. I had been floating
in a luxury of dream. Now I flouted Circe,
and struggled back into full possession of
my personality. I was tickled, amused,
amazed.

Then N. read me a series of informative
snippets: how to make your lamp burn
brighter (by putting a spoonful of sugar
in the oil-well) ; how black beetles were not
really beetles at all ; how Alfred Noyes was

A LAST DIARY 87

a great poet ; what a red bargee meant ;
what a Blue Peter signified.

At this my gorge rose at last. In the
tones of a puff-breasted pedagogue addressing
a small boy, I said : " Oh, don't you know
the famous line of R. L. S. about climbing
into a sea-going ship when the Blue Peter
is floating aloft ?"

Now this was a contemptible piece of
pride, for I only wanted to demonstrate to
this scabby old bean that I knew all about
a Blue Peter, and it was like her cheek to
suppose I didn't. I experience the same
irritation when she explains to me how to
go from Paddington to Victoria, or where
the British Museum is. Of a truth I
am no dream figure then. The veritable
W. N. P. B. shows his bristling pelage from
every opening in the wires of the cage.

How petty ! Intellectual pride has been
the bane of my life. Yet 1 must be fair to
myself. Who, 1 should like to know, has
received greater incentive to this vice ? Have
not inferior types all my life choked me,

88 A LAST DIARY

bound me, romped over me ? But what a
beautifully geometrical Nemesis it all is!
Here I am in the last scene of the last act,
the ruthless, arrogant intellectual, spending
the last days of his ruined life alone, in the
close companionship of an uneducated village
woman who reads Answers.

February 8th, 1919. 100,000 copies of
Marie BashkirtsefFs Journal were sold in
America alone. If 100,000 copies of my
book are sold, that will mean 5,000 for E.
Then 1 have a second volume for posthu-
mous publication, the re