July 14
My old head master once prophesied for me “a brilliant career.” That was when I was in the Third Form. Now I have more than a suspicion that I am one of those who, as he once pointed out, grow sometimes out of a brilliant boyhood into very commonplace men. This continuous ill health is having a very obvious effect on my work and activities. With what courage I possess I have to face the fact that today I am unable to think or express myself as well as when I was a boy in my teens—witness this Journal!
I intend to go on however. I have decided that my death shall be disputed all the way.
Oh! it is so humiliating to die! I writhe to think of being overcome by so unfair an enemy before I have demonstrated myself to maiden aunts who mistrust me, to colleagues who scorn me, and even to brothers and sisters who believe in me.
As an Egotist I hate death because I should cease to be I.
Most folk, when sick unto death, gain a little consolation over the notoriety gained by the fact of their decease. Criminals enjoy the pomp and circumstance of their execution. Voltaire said of Rousseau that he wouldn’t mind being hanged if they’d stick his name on the gibbet. But my own death would be so mean and insignificant. Guy de Maupassant died in a grand manner—a man of intellect and splendid physique who became insane. Tusitala’s death in the South Seas reads like a romance. Heine, after a life of sorrow, died with a sparkling witticism on his lips; Vespasian with a jest.
But I cannot for the life of me rake up any excitement over my own immediate decease—an unobtrusive passing away of a rancorous, disappointed, morbid, and self-assertive entomologist in a West Kensington Boarding House—what a mean little tragedy! It is hard not to be somebody even in death.
A singsong tonight in the drawing-room; all the boardinghouse present in full muster. There was a German, Schulz, who sat and leered at his inamorata—a sensual-looking, pasty-faced girl—while she gave us daggers-and-moonlight recitations with the most unwarranted self-assurance (she boasts of a walking-on part at one of the theatres); there was Miss M⸺ listening to her fiancé, Capt. O⸺ (home from India), singing Indian Love Songs at her; there was Miss T⸺, a sour old maid, who knitted and snorted, not fully conscious of this young blood coursing around her; Mrs. Barclay Woods pursued her usual avocation of imposing on us all the great weight of her immense social superiority, clucking, in between, to her one chick—a fluffy girl of eighteen or nineteen, who was sitting now in the draught, now too close to a “common” musician of the Covent Garden Opera; finally our hostess, a divorcee, who hated all males, even Tomcats. We were a pathetic little company—so motley, ill-assorted—who had come together not from love or regard but because man is a gregarious animal. In fact, we sat secretly criticising and contemning one another … yet outside there were so many millions of people unknown, and overhead the multitude of the stars was equally comfortless.
Later: … Zoology on occasion still fires my ambition! Surely I cannot be dying yet.
Whatever misfortune befalls me I do hope I shall be able to meet it unflinchingly. I do not fear ill-health in itself, but I do fear its possible effect on my mind and character. … Already I am slowly altering, as the Lord liveth. Already for example my sympathy with myself is maudlin.
Whenever the blow shall fall, some sort of a reaction must be given. Heine flamed into song. Beethoven wrote the 5th Symphony. So what shall I do when my time comes? I don’t think I have any lyrics or symphonies to write, so I shall just have to grin and bear it—like a dumb animal. … As long as I have spirit and buoyancy I don’t care what happens—for I know that for so long I cannot be accounted a failure. The only real failure is one in which the victim is left spiritless, dazed, dejected with blackness all around, and within, a knife slowly and unrelentingly cutting the strings of his heart.
My head whirls with conflicting emotions, struggling, desperate ideas, and a flood of impressions of all sorts of things that are never sufficiently sifted and arranged to be caught down on paper. I am brought into this world, hustled along it and then hustled out of it, with no time for anything. I want to be on a great hill and square up affairs.