January 3
From the drawing-room window I see pass almost daily an old gentleman with white hair, a firm step, broad shoulders, healthy pink skin, a sunny smile—always singing to himself as he goes—a happy, rosy-cheeked old fellow, with a rosy-cheeked mind. … I should like to throw mud at him. By Jove, how I hate him. He makes me wince with my own pain. It is heartless, indecently so, for an old man to be so blithe. Life has, I suppose, never lain in wait for him. The Great Anarchist has spared him a bomb.
January 19
My Aunt, aged seventy-five, who has apparently concluded from my constant absences from Church that my spiritual life is in a parlous way, today read me her portion from a large book with a broad purple-tasseled bookmark. I looked up from “I Promessi Sposi” and said “Very nice.” It was about someone whose soul was not saved and who would not answer the door when it was knocked. It is jolly to be regarded as a wicked, libidinous youth by an aged maiden Aunt.
January 22
This Diary reads for all the world as if I were not living in mighty London. The truth is I live in a bigger, dirtier city—ill-health. Ill-health, when chronic, is like a permanent ligature around one’s life. What a fine fellow I’d be if I were perfectly well. My energy for one thing would lift the roof off. …
We conversed around the text: “To travel hopefully is better than to arrive and true success is to labour.” She is—well, so graceful. My God! I love her, I love her, I love her!!!
February 3
H⸺ B⸺ invited me to tea to meet his fiancée.
Rather pleased with the invitation—I don’t know why, for my idea of myself is greater than my idea of him and probably greater than his idea of himself.
Yet I went and got shaved, and even thought of buying a new pair of gloves, but poverty proved greater than vanity, so I went with naked hands. On arriving at Turnham Green, I removed my spectacles (well knowing how much they damage my personal appearance). However, the beauty of the thing was that, though I waited as agreed, he never turned up, and so I returned home again, crestfallen—and, with my spectacles on again.
February 9
… “Now, W⸺, talk to me prettily,” she said as soon as the door was closed on them.
“Oh! make him read a book,” whined her sister, but we talked of marriage instead—in all its aspects. Bless their hearts, I found these two dear young things simply sodden with the idea of it.
In the middle I did a knee-jerk which made them scream with laughing—the patellar reflex was new to them, so I seized a brush from the grate, crossed to Her and gently tapped: out shot her foot, and ⸻ cried: “Oh, do do it to me as well.” It was rare fun.
“Oh! pretty knee, what do I see?
And he stooped and he tied up my garter for me.”
February 10
News of Scott’s great adventure! Scott dead a year ago!! The news, when I saw it tonight in the Pall Mall Gazette gave me cold thrills. I could have wept. … What splendid people we humans are! If there be no loving God to watch us, it’s a pity for His sake as much as for our own.
February 15
Tried to kiss her in a taxicab on the way home from the Savoy—the taxicab danger is very present with us—but she rejected me quietly, sombrely. I apologised on the steps of the Flats and said I feared I had greatly annoyed her. “I’m not annoyed,” she said, “only surprised”—in a thoughtful, chilly voice.
We had had supper in Soho, and I took some wine, and she looked so bewitching it sent me in a fever, thrumming my fingers on the seat of the cab while she sat beside me impassive. Her shoulders are exquisitely modelled and a beautiful head is carried poised on a tiny neck.
February 16
Walking up the steps to her flat tonight made me pose to H⸺ (who was with me) as Sydney Carton in the picture in A Tale of Two Cities on the steps of the scaffold. He laughed boisterously, as he is delighted to know of my last evening’s misadventure.
At supper, a story was told of a man who knocked at the door of his lady’s heart four times and at last was admitted. I remarked that the last part of the romance was weak. She disagreed. H⸺ exclaimed, “Oh! but this man has no sentiment at all!”
“So much the worse for him,” chimed in the others.
“He was 66 years of age,” added Mrs. ⸻.
“Too old,” said P. “What do you think the best age for a man to marry?”
H.: “Thirty for a man, twenty-five for a woman.”
She: “That’s right: it still gives me a little time.”
P.: “What do you think?” (to me).
I replied sardonically—
“A young man may not yet and an old man not at all.”
“That’s right, old wet blanket,” chirruped P⸺.
“You know,” I continued, delighted to seize the opportunity to assume the role of youthful cynic, “Cupid and Death once met at an Inn and exchanged arrows, since when young men have died and old men have doted.”
H⸺ was charming enough to opine that it was impossible to fix a time for love. Love simply came.
We warned him to be careful on the boat going out.
“Yes, I know,” said H⸺ (who is in love with P⸺).
“My brother had a dose of moonlight on board a boat when he sailed and he’s been happy ever since.”
P.: “How romantic!”
H.: “A great passion!”
“The only difference,” I interjected in a sombre monotone, “between a passion and a caprice is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”
“Sounds like a book,” She said in contempt.
It was—Oscar Wilde!
P⸺ insisted on my taking a biscuit. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “Just think I’m a waitress and take no notice at all.”
H.: “Humph! I never see him taking no notice of a waitress.”
(Sneers and Curtain.)
February 24
H⸺ came home last night and told me that she said as he came away, “Tell W⸺ I hate him.” So it’s all right. I shall go over tomorrow again—Hurrah! My absence has been felt then.
March 7
Came home, lay on my bed, still dressed, and ruminated. …
First a suspicion then a conviction came to me that I was a cad—a callous, selfish, sensation-hunting cad. … For the time being the bottom was knocked out of my smug self-satisfaction. For several long half-hours I found myself drifting without compass or stars. I was quite disorientated, temporarily thrown off the balance of my amour propre. Then I got up, lit the gas and looking at myself in the mirror, found it was really true—I was a mean creature, wholly absorbed in self.
As an act of contrition, I ought to have gone out into the garden and eaten worms. But the mirror brought back my self-consciousness and I began to crawl back into my recently discarded skin—I began to be less loathsome to myself. For as soon as I felt interested or amused or curious over the fact that I had been really loathsome to myself I began to regain my equilibrium. Now, I and myself are on comparatively easy terms with one another. I am settled on the old swivel. … I take a lot of knocking off it and if shot off soon return.
Today, she was silent and melancholy but wonderfully fascinating. One day I am desperate and the next cold and apathetic. Am I in love? God knows! She came to the door to say “Good night,” and I deliberately strangled my desire to say something.
March 9
In bed till 12:30 reading Bergson and the O.T.
Over to the flat to supper. E⸺ was cold and silent. She spurned me. No wonder. I talked volubly and quite brilliantly with the definite purpose of showing up J⸺’s somnolence. I also pulled his leg. He hates me. No wonder. After supper, he went in to her studio and remained there alone with her while she worked. At 11 p.m. he was still there when I came away in a whirlwind of jealousy, regrets, and rage. G⸺ said he was going to stay on until he saw “the blighter off the premises.” Neither of us would go in to turn him out.
I love her deeply and once my heart jumped when I thought I heard her coming into the room. But it was only P⸺. Did not see her again—even to say “Good night.”
March 10
Work in the evening in our bedroom—two poor miserable bachelors—H⸺ reading Equity Law, a rug around his legs before an empty grate, while I am sitting at the table in topcoat, with collar up, and writing my magnum opus, which is to bring me fame, fortune and—E⸺!
H⸺ says that this morning I was putting on my shoes when he pointed out a large hole in the heel of my sock.
“Damn! I shall have to wear boots,” I said—at least he says I said it, and I am quite ready to believe him. Such unconsciousness of self is rare with me.
March 15
[At a public dinner at the Holborn Restaurant] J⸺replied to the toast of the Ladies. Feeble! H⸺ and I stood and had a silent toast to E⸺ and N⸺ by just winking one eye at each other. He sat opposite me.
If I had been asked to reply to this toast I should have said with the greatest gusto, something as follows—
[Here follows the imaginary speech in full, composed the same night before going to sleep.]
Yet I am taken for a soft fool! My manner is soft, self-conscious, shy. What a lot of self-glorification I lose thereby! What a lot of self-torture I gain in its stead!
March 17
Today went to the B.M. but did very little work. Thought over the matter carefully and decided to ask E⸺ to marry me. Relief to be able to decide. I was happy too.
Yesterday P⸺ came in to us from E⸺’s studio and said—
“E⸺ sends her love.”
“To whom?” H⸺ inquired.
“I don’t know,” P⸺ replied, smiling at me.
March 18
Had a long conversation with H⸺ last night. He says all E⸺ intended to convey was that the quarrel was over. … I felt relieved, because I have no money, but—a large ambition. Then I am selfish, and have not forgotten that I want to spend my holidays in the Jura, and next year three weeks at the Plymouth Laboratory.
March 19
Went over to see E⸺. We had an awkward half-an-hour alone together. She was looking bewitching! I am plunging more and more into love. Had it on the tip of my tongue once. I am dreadfully fond of her.
“I have a most profound gloom over me,” I said.
“Why don’t you try and get rid of it?” she asked.
“I can’t until Zeus has pity and rolls away the clouds.”
April 21
We are sitting up in our beds which are side by side in a room on the top story of a boarding house in ⸻ Road.
It is 11:30 p.m. and I am leaning over one one side lighting the oil lamp so as to boil the kettle to make Ovaltine before going to sleep.
“Whom have I seduced?” I screamed. “You rotter, don’t you know that a dead passion full of regrets is as terrible as a dead body full of worms? There, I talk literature, my boy, if you were only Boswell enough to take it down. … As for K⸺, I shall never invite him to dinner again. He comes to me and whines that nobody loves him, and so I say, ‘Oh! poor lad, never mind, if you’re bored, why, come to my rooms of an evening and hear me talk—you’ll have the time of your life.’ And now he’s cheeky.”
H. (sipping his drink and very much preoccupied with it) replied abstractedly, “When you die you’ll go to Hell.” (I liked his Homeric simplicity.) “You ought to be buried in a fireproof safe.”
Silence.
H. (returning to the attack), “I hope she turns you down.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“As for P⸺,” he resumed, “she’s double-Dutch to me.”
“Go to the Berlitz School,” I suggested, “and learn the language.”
“You bally fool. … All you do is to sit there and smile like a sanguinary cat. Nothing I say ever rouses you. I believe if I came to you and said, ‘Here, Professor, is a Beetle with 99 legs that has lived on granite in the middle of the Sahara for 40 days and 40 nights,’ you’d simply answer, ‘Yes, and that reminds me I’ve forgotten to blow my nose.’ ”
The two pyjamaed figures shake with laughing, the light goes out and the sanguinary conversation continues on similar lines until we fall asleep.
April 26
In a horrible panic—the last few days—I believe I am developing locomotor ataxy. One leg, one arm, and my speech are affected, i.e. the right side and my speech centre. M⸺ is serious. … I hope the disease, whatever it is, will be sufficiently lingering to enable me to complete my book.
R⸺ is a dear man. I shall not easily forget his kindness during this terrible week. … Can the Fates have the audacity? … Who can say?
April 27
I believe there can be no doubt that I have had a slight partial paralysis of my right side (like Dad). I stutter a little in my speech when excited, I cannot write properly (look at this handwriting), and my right leg is rocky at the knee. My head swims.
It is too inconceivably horrible to be buried in the Earth in such splendid spring weather. Who can tell me what is in store for me? … Life opens to me, I catch a glimpse of a vision, and the doors clang to again noiselessly. It is dark. That will be my history. Am developing a passionate belief in my book and a fever of haste to complete it before the congé définitif.
April 29
Saw M⸺ again, who said my symptoms were alarming certainly, but he was sure no definite diagnosis could be made.
April 30
Went with M⸺ to see a well-known nerve specialist—Dr. H⸺. He could find no symptoms of a definite disease, though he asked me suspiciously if I had ever been with women.
Ordered two months’ complete rest in the country. H⸺ chased me round his consulting room with a drumstick, tapping my nerves and cunningly working my reflexes. Then he tickled the soles of my feet and pricked me with a pin—all of which I stood like a man. He wears a soft black hat, looks like a Quaker, and reads the Verhandlungen d. Gesellschaft d. Nervenarzten.
M⸺ is religious and after I had disclosed my physique to him yesterday (for the 99th time) he remained on his knees by the couch in his consulting room (after working my reflexes) for a moment or two in the attitude of prayer. When the Doctor prays for you—better call in the undertaker. My epitaph “He played Ludo well.” The game anyhow requires moral stamina—ask H⸺.
May 5
At R⸺. Mugged about all day. Put on a gramophone record—then crawled up into a corner of the large, empty drawing room and ate my heart out. Heart has a bitter taste—if it’s your own.
May 6
Sat in the “morning room” feeling ill. In the chair opposite sat Aunt Fanny, aged 86, knitting. I listened to the click of her needles, while out in the garden a thrush sang, and there was a red sunset.
May 8
Before I left R⸺, A⸺ [My brother] had written to Uncle enclosing my doctor’s letter. I don’t know the details except that Dr. M⸺ emphasised the seriousness and yet held out hope that two months’ rest would allay the symptoms.
May 11
I made some offensive remark to H⸺ whom I met in the street. This set him off.
“You blighter, I hope you marry a loose woman. May your children be all bandy-legged and squint-eyed, may your teeth drop out, and your toes have bunions,” and so on in his usual lengthy commination.
I turned to the third man.
“Bob—this!—after all I’ve done for that young man! I have even gone out of my way to cultivate in him a taste for poetry—until he is now, in fact, quite wrapped up in it—indeed, so much so, that for a time he was nothing but a brown paper parcel labelled Poetry.”
H. (doggedly): “When are you going to die?”
“That Master H⸺,” I answered menacingly, “is on the knees of the Gods.”
H.: “I shan’t believe you’re dead till I see your tombstone. I shall then say to the Sexton, ‘Is he really dead, then?’ and the Sexton will say, ‘Well, ’ee’s buried onny way.’ ”
Bob was not quite in sympathy with our boisterous spirits.
May 15
Sought out H⸺ as he was watering his petunias in the garden. He informed me he was going to London on Monday.
H.: “Mother is coming too.”
B.: “Why?”
H.: “Oh! I’m buying my kit—shirts and things. I sail at the beginning of July.”
B.: “I suppose shirts are difficult to buy. You wouldn’t know what to do with one if you had one. Your mother will lead you by the hand into a shop and say, ‘H⸺, dear, this is a shirt,’ and you’ll reply with pathos, ‘Mother what are the wild shirts saying?’ ”
H.: “You’re a B.F.” (goes on watering).
“I wonder what you’d do if you were let loose in a big garden,” I began.
H.: “I should be as happy as a bird. I should hop about, chirrup and lay eggs. You should have seen my tomato plants last year—one was as tall as father.”
B.: “Now tell me of the Gooseberry as big as Mother.”
Mutual execrations. Then we grinned and cackled at each other, emitting weird and ferocious cachinnations. Several times a day in confidential, serious tones—after one of these explosions—we say, “I really believe we’re mad.” You never heard such extraordinary caterwaulings. Our snappy conversations are interrupted with them every minute or so!
A stagnant day. Lay still in the Park all day with just sufficient energy to observe. The Park was almost empty. Everyone but me at work. Nothing is more dreary than a pleasure ground on workdays. There was one man a little way off throwing a ball to a clever dog. Behind me on the path, someone came along wheeling a pram. I listened in a kind of coma to the scrunching of the gravel in the distance a long time after the pram was out of sight. Far away—the tinkle of Church bells in a village across the river, and, in front, the man still throwing the ball to his clever dog.
May 25
… I suppose the truth is I am at last broken to the idea of Death. Once it terrified me and once I hated it. But now it only annoys me. Having lived with the Bogey for so long, and broken bread with him so often, I am used to his ugliness, though his persistent attentions bore me. Why doesn’t he do it and have done with me? Why this deference, why does he pass me everything but the poison? Why am I such an unconscionably long time dying?
What embitters me is the humiliation of having to die, to have to be pouring out the precious juices of my life into the dull Earth, to be no longer conscious of what goes on, no longer moving abroad upon the Earth creating attraction and repulsions, pouring out one’s ego in a stream. To think that the women I have loved will be marrying and forget, and that the men I have hated will continue on their way and forget I ever hated them—the ignominy of being dead! What voluble talker likes his mouth to be stopped with earth, who relishes the idea of the carrion worm mining in the seat of the intellect?
May 29
Staying at the King’s Hotel, ⸻. Giddiness very bad. Death seems unavoidable. A tumour on the brain?
Coming down here in the train, sat in corner of the compartment, twined one leg around the other, rested my elbow on the window ledge, and gazed out helplessly at the exuberant green fields, green woods, and green hedgerows. The weather was perfect, the sun blazed down.
Certainly, I was rather sorry for myself at the thought of leaving it all. But I girded up my loins and wrapped around me for a while the mantle of a nobler sentiment; i.e. I felt sorry for the others as well—for the two brown carters in the road ambling along with a timber wagon, for the two old maids in the same compartment with me knitting bedsocks, for the beautiful Swallows darting over the stream, for the rabbit that lopped into the fern just as we passed—they too were all leaving it.
The extent of my benign compassion startled me—it was so unexpected. Perhaps for the first time in my life I forgot all about my own miserable ambitions—I forgave the successful, the timeservers, the self-satisfied, the overweening, the gracious and condescending—all, in fact, who hitherto have been thorns in my flesh and innocently enough have goaded me to still fiercer efforts to win through. “Poor people,” I said. “Leave them alone. Let them be happy if they can.” With a submissive heart, I was ready to sit down in the rows of this world’s failures and never have thought one bitter word about success. To all those persons who in one way or another had foiled my purposes I extended a pardon with Olympian gravity, and, strangest of all, I could have melted such frosty moral rectitudes with a genuine interest in the careers of my struggling contemporaries. With perfect self-abnegation, I held out my hand to them and wished them all “God Speed.”
It was a strange metempsychosis. Yet of a truth it is no use being niggardly over our lives. We are all of us “shelling out.” And we can afford to be generous, for we shall all—some early, some late—be bankrupt in the end. For my part, I’ve had a short and boisterous voyage and shan’t be sorry to get into port. I give up all my plans, all my hopes, all my loves and enthusiasms without remonstrance. I renounce all—I myself am already really dead.
May 30
Last night the sea was as flat as a pavement, a pretty barque with all her sails out to catch the smallest puff of wind—the tiniest inspiration—was nevertheless without motion—a painted ship on a tapestry of violet. H⸺ Hill was an immense angular mass of indigo blue. Even rowing boats made little progress and the water came off the languid paddles in syrupy clots. Everything was utterly still, the air thick—like cotton wool to the touch and very stifling; vitality in living things leaked away under a sensuous lotus influence. Intermittently after the darkness had come, Bullpoint Lighthouse shone like the wink of a lascivious eye.
Pottering about all day on the Pier and Front, listening to other people’s talk, catching snippets of conversation—not edifying. If there were seven wise men in the town, I would not save it. Damn the place!
May 31
… I espied her first in the distance and turned my head away quickly and looked out to sea. A moment after, I began to turn my head round again slowly with the cautiousness and air of suspicion of a Tortoise poking its head out from underneath his shell. I was terrified to discover that in the meantime she had come and sat down on the seat immediately behind me with her back to mine. We sat like this back to back for some time and I enjoyed the novel experience and the tension. A few years ago, the bare sight of her gave me palpitation of the heart, and, on the first occasion that I had the courage to stop to speak, I felt livid and the skin on my face twitched uncontrollably.
Presently I got up and walked past—in the knowledge that she must now be conscious of my presence after a disappearance of three years. Later we met face to face and I broke the ice. She’s a pretty girl. … So too is her sister.
Few people, except my barber, know how amorous I am. He has to shave my sinuous lips.
June 3
Spent many dreadful hours cogitating whether to accept their invitation to dinner. … I wanted to go for several reasons. I wanted to see her in a home-setting for the first time, and I wanted to spend the evening with three pretty girls. I also had the idea of displaying myself to the scrutinising gaze of the family as the hero of the old romance: and of showing Her how much I had progressed since last we met and what a treasure she had lost.
On the other hand, I was afraid that the invitation was only a casual one, I feared a snuffy reception, a frosty smile and a rigid hand. Could I go up and partake of meat at their board, among brothers and sisters taking me for an ogre of a jilt, and she herself perhaps opposite me making me blush perpetually to recall our onetime passionate kisses, our love letters and our execrable verses to each other! There seemed dreadful possibilities in such an adventure. Yet I badly wanted to experience the piquant situation.
At 7 p.m., half an hour before I was due, decided on strong measures. I entered a pub and took a stiff whisky and soda, and then set off with a stout heart to take the icy family by storm—and if need be live down my evil reputation by my amiability and urbanity!
I went—and of course everything passed off in the most normal manner. She is a very pretty girl—like velvet. Before dinner, we walked in the garden—and talked only of flowers.
June 4
On the Hill, this morning, felt the thrill of the news of my own Death: I mean I imagined I heard the words—
“You’ve heard the news about B⸺?”
Second Voice: “No, what?”
“He’s dead.”
Silence.
Won’t all this seem piffle if I don’t die after all! As an artist in life I ought to die; it is the only artistic ending—and I ought to die now or the Third Act will fizzle out in a long doctor’s bill.
June 5
Watched some men put a new pile in the pier. There was all the usual paraphernalia of chains, pulleys, cranes, and ropes, with a massive wooden pile swinging over the water at the end of a long wire hawser. Everything was in the massive style—even the men—very powerful men, slow, ruminative, silent men.
Nothing very relevant could be gathered from casual remarks. The conversation was without exception monosyllabic: “Let go,” or “Stand fast.” But by close attention to certain obscure movements of the man on the ladder near the water’s edge, it gradually came through to my consciousness that all these powerful, silent men were up against some bitter difficulty. I cannot say what it was. The burly monsters were silent about the matter. … In fact they appeared almost indifferent—and tired, oh! so very tired of the whole business. The attitude of the man nearest me was that for all he cared the pile could go on swinging in midair to the crack of Doom.
They continued slow, laborious efforts to overcome the secret difficulty. But these gradually slackened and finally ceased. One massive man after another abandoned his post in order to lean over the rails and gaze like a mystic into the depths of the sea. No one spoke. No one saw anything not even in the depths of the sea. One spat, and with round, sad eyes contemplated the trajectory of his brown bolus (he had been chewing) in its descent into the water.
The foreman, an original thinker, lit a cigarette, which relieved the tension. Then, slowly and with majesty, he turned on his heel, and walked away. With the sudden eclipse of the foreman’s interest, the incident closed. I should have been scarcely surprised to find him behind the Harbour-master’s Office playing “Shove-ha’penny” or skittles with the pile still swinging in midair. … After all it was only a bloody pile.
June 11
Suffering from depression. … The melancholy fit fell very suddenly. All the colour went out of my life, the world was dirty gray. On the way back to my hotel caught sight of H⸺, jumping into a cab, after a visit to S⸺ Sands. But the sight of him aroused no desire in me to shout or wave. I merely wondered how on earth he could have spent a happy day at such a Sandy place.
On arriving at ⸻, sank deeper into my morass. It suffocated me to find the old familiar landmarks coming into view … the holidaymakers along the streets how I hated them—the Peg Top Hill how desolate—all as before—how dull. The very fact that they were all there as before in the morning nauseated me. The seacoast here is magnificent, the town is pretty—I know that, of course. But all looked dreary and cheerless—just the sort of feeling one gets on entering an empty house with no fire on a winter’s day and nowhere to sit down. … I felt as lonely and desolate as a man suddenly fallen from the clouds into an unknown town on the Antarctic Continent built of ice and inhabited by Penguins. Who are these people? I asked myself irritably. There perhaps on the other side of the street was my own brother. But I was not even faintly interested and told the cabman to drive on. The spray from the sea fogged my spectacles and made me weary.
June 14
The restlessness of the sea acts as a soporific on jangled nerves. You gaze at its incessant activities, unwillingly at first because they distract your attention from your own cherished worries and griefs—but later you watch with complete self-abandon—it wrenches you out of yourself—and eventually with a kind of stupid hypnotic stare.
The day has been overcast, but tonight a soft breeze sprang up and swept the sky clear as softly as a mop. The sun coming out shone upon a white sail far out in the channel, scarcely another vessel hove in sight. The white sail glittered like a piece of silver paper whenever the mainsail swung round as the vessel tacked. Its solitariness and whiteness in a desert of marine blue attracted the attention and held it till at last I could look at nothing else. The sight of it—so clean and white and fair—set me yearning for all the rarest and most exquisite things my imagination could conjure up—a beautiful girl, with fair and sunburnt skin, brown eyes, dark eyebrows, and small pretty feet; a dewdrop in a violet’s face; an orange-tip butterfly swinging on an umbel of a flower.
The sail went on twinkling and began to exert an almost moral influence over me. It drew out all the good in me. I longed to follow it on white wings—an angel I suppose—to quit this husk of a body “as raiment put away,” and pursue Truth and Beauty across the sea to the horizon, and beyond the horizon up the sky itself to its last tenuous confines, no doubt with a still small voice summoning me and the rest of the elect to an Agapemone, with Dr. Spurgeon at the door distributing tracts.
I can scoff like this now. But at the time my exaltation was very real. My soul strained in the leash. I was full of a desire for unattainable spiritual beauty. I wanted something. But I don’t know what I want.
June 16
My sense of touch has always been morbidly acute. I like to feel a cigarette locked in the extreme corner of my mouth. When I remove it from my mouth then I hold it probably up in the fork between two fingers. If I am waiting for a meal I finger the cool knives and forks. If I am in the country I plunge my hands with outspread fingers into a mass of large-topped grasses, then close my fingers, crush and decapitate the lot.
June 27
A brilliant summer day. Up early, breakfasted, and, clad in sweater and trousers, walked up the sands to the boathouse with bare feet.
Everything was wonderful! I strode along over the level sands infatuated with the sheer ability to put one leg in front of the other and walk. I loved to feel the muscles of my thighs working, and to swing my arms in rhythm with the stride. The stiff breeze had blown the sky clear, and was rushing through my long hair, and bellowing into each ear. I strode as Alexander must have done!
Then I stretched my whole length out along a flat plank on the sands, which was as dry as a bone and warm. There was not a soul on the sands. Everything was bare, clean, windswept. My plank had been washed clean and white. The sands—3 miles of it—were hard and purified, level. My eye raced along in every direction—there was nothing—not a bird or a man—to stop it. In that immense windswept space nothing was present save me and the wind and the sea—a flattering moment for the egotist.
At the foot of the cliffs on the return journey met an old man gathering sticks. As he ambled along dropping sticks into a long sack he called out casually, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ?” in the tone of voice in which one would say, “I think we shall have some rain before night.” “Aye, aye,” came the answer without hesitation from a boy lying on his back in the sands a few yards distant, “and that He died to save me.”
Life is full of surprises like this. The only other sounds I have heard today were the Herring Gull’s cackle. Your own gardener will one day look over his rake and give you the correct chemical formula for carbonic acid gas. I met a postman once reading Shelley as he walked his rounds.
June 28
I am writing this by the lamp in the cabin among the sand hills waiting for H⸺ to arrive from town with provisions. I wear a pair of bags, a dirty sweater, and go without hat or shoes and stockings. There is a “Deadwood Dick” atmosphere here. I’m a sort of bronco-breaker or rancher off duty writing home. In a minute I haven’t the slightest doubt, H⸺ will gallop into the compound, tether his colt and come in “raising Cain” for a belly-full of red meat. … If I am going to live after all (touch wood) I shall go abroad and be in the open.
I eat greedily, am getting very sunburnt, am growing hairy (that means strength!), and utter portentous oaths. If I stayed here much longer I should grow a tail and climb trees.
After a supper of fried eggs and fried bread done to a nicety, turned in at ten, and both of us lay warm and comfortable in bed, smoking cigarettes and listening to Hoffmann’s Barcarolle on the gramophone. We put the lamp out, and it pleased us to watch the glow of each other’s cigarettes in the dark. … Neither of us spoke. … Went to sleep at midnight. Awoke at sunrise to hear an Owl still hooting, a Lark singing, and several Jackdaws clattering on our tin roof with their claws as they walked.
July 1
Returned to London very depressed. Am not so well as I was three weeks ago. The sight of one eye is affected, and I am haunted by the possibility of blindness. Then I have a numb feeling on one side of my face, and my right arm is less mobile.
Left darling Mother in a very weak state in bed, with neuritis and a weak heart. She cried when I said “Goodbye,” and asked me to go to Church as often as I could, and to read a portion of Scripture every day. I promised. Then she added, “For Dad’s sake;” just as if I would not do it for her. Poor dear, she suffers a deal of pain. She does not know how ill I am. I have not told her.
July 3
Back at work. A terrible day. Thoughts of suicide—a pistol.
July 8
I get through each day with the utmost difficulty. I have to wrestle with every minute. Each hour is a conquest. The three quarters of an hour at lunch comes as a Godsend. I look forward to it all the morning, I enter into it with joyful relief with no thought of the dreadful moment impending when I must return and reenter my room. By being wise like this, I manage to husband my spirits and am relatively cheerful for one hour in the middle of each difficult day.
July 9
Several times I have gone to bed and hoped I should never wake up. Life grows daily more impossible. Today I put a slide underneath the microscope and looked at it. It was like looking at something through the wrong end of a telescope. I sat with eye glued to the ocular, so as to keep up a pretence of work in case someone came in. My mind was occupied with quite different affairs. If one is pondering on Life and Death, it is a terrible task to have to study Mites.
July 10
Am doing no work at all. … I sit motionless in my chair and beat the devil’s tattoo with my thumbs and think, think, think in the same horrible circle hour after hour. I am unable to work. I haven’t the courage to. I’ve lost my nerve.
At five I return “home” to the Boardinghouse and get more desperate.
Two old maids sat down to dinner tonight, one German youth (a lascivious, ranting, brainless creature), a lady typist (who takes drugs they say), a dipsomaniac (who has monthly bouts—H⸺ carried him upstairs and put him to bed the other night), two invertebrate violinists who play in the Covent Garden Orchestra, a colonial lady engaged in a bedroom intrigue with a man who sits at my table. What are these people to me? I hate them all. They know it and are offended.
After dinner, put on my cap and rushed out anywhere to escape. Walked to the end of the street, not knowing where I was going or what doing. Stopped and stared with fixed eyes at the traffic in Kensington Road, undetermined what to do with myself and unable to make up my mind (volitional paralysis). Turned round, walked home, and went straight to bed 9 p.m., anxiously looking forward to tomorrow evening when I go to see her again, but at the same time wondering how on earth I am to get through tomorrow’s round before the evening comes. … This is a hand-to-mouth existence. My own inner life is scorching up all outside interests. Zoology appears as a curious thing in a Baghdad bazaar. I sit in my room at the B.M. and play with it; I let it trickle through my fingers and roll away like a child playing with quicksilver.
July 11
Over to the flat. She was looking beautiful in a black dress, with a white silk blouse, and a Byron collar, negligently open in front as if a button had come out. She said I varied: sometimes I went up in her estimation, sometimes down; once I went down very low. I understood her to say I was now up! Alleluia!
July 14
… It would take too long and I am too tired to write out all the varying phases of this day’s life—all its impressions and petty miseries chasing one another across my consciousness or leapfrogging over my chest like gleeful fiends.
July 21
Thoroughly enjoyed the journey up to town this morning. I secretly gloated over the fact that the train was dashing along over the rails to London bearing me and all the rest of the train’s company upon their pursuits—wealth, fame, learning. I was inebriated with the speed, ferocity, and dash of living. … If the train had charged into the buffers I should have hung my head out of the window and cheered. If a man had got in my way, I’d have knocked him down. The wheels of the carriage were singing a lusty song in which I joined.
July 30
… We talked of men and women, and she said she thought men were neither angels nor devils but just men. I said I thought women were either angels or devils.
“I am afraid to ask you which you think me.”
“You needn’t,” I said shortly.
August 9
Horribly upset with news from home. Mother is really ill. The Doctor fears serious nerve trouble and says she will always be an invalid. This is awful, poor dear! It’s dreadful, and yet I have a tiny wish buried at the bottom of my heart that she may be removed early from us rather than linger in pain of body and mind. Especially do I hope she may not live to hear any grievous news of me. … What irony that she should lose the use of her right arm only two years after Dad’s death from paralysis. It is cruel for it reminds her of Dad’s illness. … What, too, would she think if she could have heard M⸺’s first words to me yesterday on one of my periodical visits to his consulting room, “Well, how’s the paralysis?”
In the evening went over to see her. She was wearing a black silk gown and looked handsome. … She is always the same sombre, fascinating, lissom, soft-voiced She! She herself never changes. … What am I to do? I cannot give her up and yet I do not altogether wish to take her to my heart. It distresses me to know how to proceed. I am a wily fish.
August 10
Sat in the gardens with her. We sat facing the sun for a while until she was afraid of developing freckles and turned around, deliberately turning her back on good King Sol. … I said it was disrespectful.
“Oh! he doesn’t mind,” she said. “He’s a dear. He kissed me and said, ‘Turn round my dear if you like.’ ”
Isn’t she tantalising?
I wanted to say sarcastically, “I wonder you let him kiss you,” but there was a danger of the remark reviving the dead.
August 14
I tried my best, I’ve sought every loophole of escape, but I am quite unable to avoid the melancholy fact that her thumbs are—lamentable. I am genuinely upset about it for I like her. No one more than I would be more delighted if they were otherwise. … Poor dear! how I love her! That’s why I’m so concerned about her thumbs.
August 21
A wire from A⸺ came at 11:50 saying “Darling Mother passed peacefully away yesterday afternoon.” … Yesterday afternoon I was writing Zoology and all last night I slept soundly. … It was quite sudden. Caught the first train home.
August 23
The funeral.
August 31
Staying at the Hotel du Guesclin at Cancale near St. Malo with my dear A⸺.
This flood of new experiences has knocked my diary habit out of gear. To be candid, I’ve forgotten all about myself. I’ve been too engrossed in living to stand the strain of setting down and in cold blood writing out all the things seen and heard. If I once began I should blow through these pages like a whirlwind. … But what a waste of time with M. le batelier waiting outside with his bisque to take us mackerel fishing! …
September 8
Returned to Southampton yesterday. Have spent the night at Okehampton in Devonshire en route for T⸺ Rectory. This morning we hatched the ridiculous idea of hiring two little Dartmoor ponies and riding out from the town. A⸺ rides fairly well though he has not been astride a beast for years. As for me, I cannot ride at all! Yet I had the idea that I could easily manage a pretty little pony with brown eyes and a long tail. On going out into the Inn yard, was horrified—two horses saddled—one a large traction beast. … I climbed on to the smaller one, walked him out of the yard and down the road in good style without accident. Once in the country, however, my animal, the fresher of the two, insisted on a smart trot which shook me up a good deal so that I hardly kept my seat. This eventually so annoyed the animal that it began to fidget and zigzag across the road—no doubt preparing to break away at a stretch gallop when once it had rid itself of the incomprehensible pair of legs across its back.
I got off quickly and swapped horses with A⸺.
Walked him most of the way, while A⸺ cantered forward and back to cheer me on. Ultimately however this beast, too, got sick of walking and began to trot. For a time I stood this well and began to rise in my saddle quite nicely. After two miles, horrible soreness supervened, and I had to get off—very carefully, with a funny feeling in my legs—even looked down at them to assure myself they were not bandy! In doing so, the horse—this traction monster—stepped on my toe and I swore.
On nearing the village, L⸺ arrived, riding A⸺’s animal and holding his sides for laughing at me as I crawled along holding the carthorse by the bridle. Got on again and rode into the Rectory grounds in fine style like a dashing cavalier, everyone jeering at me from the lawn.
September 28
Having lived on this planet now for the space of twenty-four years, I can claim with some cogency that I am qualified to express some sort of opinion about it. I therefore hereby record that I find myself in an absorbingly interesting place where I live, move and have my being, dominated by one monstrous feature above all others—the mystery of it all! Everything is so astonishing, my own existence so incredible!
Nothing explains itself. Everyone is dumb. It is like walking about at a masqued Ball. … Even I myself am a mystery to me. How wonderful and frightening that is—to feel yourself—your innermost and most substantial possession to be a mystery, incomprehensible. I look at myself in the mirror and mock at myself. On some days I am to myself as strange and unfamiliar as a Pterodactyl. There is a certain grim humour in finding myself here possessed of a perfectly arbitrary arrangement of lineaments when I never asked to be here and never selected my own attributes. To the dignity of a human being it seems like a coarse practical joke. … My own freakish physique is certainly a joke.
October 4
K⸺ comes in from her dancing class, nods to me, hugs her sister around the neck and says—
“Oh! you dear thing, you’ve got a cold.”
“I shouldn’t do that,” I remark, green-eyed, “she’s in an awful wax tonight.”
She: “Oh! I don’t mind K⸺!”
(Laughter!)
October 8
Heard a knock at the door last night, and, thinking it was R⸺, I unbolted it and let in a tramp who at once asked God to bless me and crown all my sorrow with joy. An amiable fellow to be sure—so I gave him some coppers and he at once repeated with wonderful fervour, “God bless you, sir.”
“I wish He would,” I answered, “I have a horrible cold.”
“Ah, I know, I gets it myself and the hinfluenza—have you had that, sir?”
In ten minutes I should have told him all my personal history. But he was thirsting for a drink and went off quickly and left me with my heart unburdened. London is a lonely place.
Today journeyed to ⸻ where I gave evidence as an expert in Economic Entomology at the County Court in a case concerning damage to furniture by mites for which I am paid £8 8s. fee and expenses and travelled first class. What irony!
October 11
I may be a weak, maundering, vacillating fool but I cannot help loving her on one day, being indifferent the next and on some occasions even disliking her. … Today she was charming, with a certain warm glossy perfection on her face and hair. … And she loves me—I could swear it. “And when a woman woos …” etc. How difficult for a vain and lonely man to resist her. She tells me many times in many dainty ways that she loves me without so much as stopping her work to talk.
I wish I were permanently and irresistibly enamoured. I want a bouleversement. …
October 13
Went to see a Harley Street oculist about the sight of one eye, which has caused a lot of trouble and worry of late and continuously haunted me with the possibility of blindness. At times, I see men as trees walking and print becomes hopelessly blurred.
The Specialist however is reassuring. The eye is healthy—no neuritis—but the adjustment muscles have been thrown out of gear by the nervous troubles of last spring.
Was ever man more sorely tempted? Here am I lonely and uncomfortable in diggings with a heart like nascent oxygen. … Shall I? Yes, but. … And I have neither health nor wealth.
October 22
I saw it for the first time today! Gadzooks!! This is the only fit ejaculation to express my amazement! It’s a pagan temple with the Gods in the middle and all around, various obscure dark figures prostrating themselves in worship.
For anyone who is not simply a Sheep or Cow or whose nervous organisation is a degree more sensitive than the village blacksmith’s, it is a besetting peril to his peace of mind to be constantly moving about an independent being, with loves and hates, and a separate identity among other separate identities, who prowl and prowl around like the hosts of Midian—ready to snarl, fight, seize you, bore you, exasperate you, to arouse all your passions, call up all the worst from the depths where they have lain hidden. … A day spent among my fellows goads me to a frenzy by the evening. I am no longer fit for human companionship. People string me up to concert pitch. I develop suspicions of one that he is prying, of another that he patronises. Others make me horribly anxious to stand well in their eyes and horribly curious to know what they think of me. Others I hate and loathe—for no particular reason. There is a man I am acquainted with concerning whom I know nothing at all. He may be Jew, Gentile, Socinian, Pre-adamite, Anabaptist, Rosicrucian—I don’t know, and I don’t care, for I hate him. I should like to smash his face in. I don’t know why. … In the whole course of our tenuous acquaintance we have spoken scarce a dozen words to each other. Yet I should like to blow up his face with dynamite. If I had £200 a year private income I should be in wait for him tomorrow round a corner and land him one—just to indicate my economic independence. He would call for the police and the policeman—discerning creature—on arrival, would surely say, “With a face like that, I’m not surprised.”
R⸺ said to me this morning, “Well, have you heard?” with an exuberance of curiosity that made my blood boil—he was referring to my Essay still at the bar of the opinion of the Editor of the English Review. “You beast,” I snapped and walked off.
R⸺ shouted with laughter for he realizes my anger with him is only semi-serious: it is meant and not meant: meant, for it is justified by the facts; not meant, for I can’t be too serious over anything au fond.
Of all the grim and ridiculous odds and ends of chance that Fortune has rolled up to my feet, my friendship with a man like B⸺ is the grimmest and most ridiculous. He is a bachelor of sixty, rather good-looking, of powerful physique and a faultless constitution. … His ignorance is colossal and he once asked whether Australia, for example, though surrounded by water, is not connected up with other land underneath the sea. Being himself a child in intelligence (though commercially cunning), he has a great respect for my brains. Being himself a strong man, he views my ill-health with much contempt. His private opinion is that I am in consumption. When asked once by a lady if I were not going to be “a great man” one day, he replied, “Yes—if he lives.” I ought to walk six miles a day, drink a bottle of stout with my dinner, and eat plenty of onions. His belief in the curative properties of onions is strong as death. …
His system of prophylaxis may be quickly summarised—
Hot whisky ad lib and off to bed.
A woman.
These two sterling preventives he has often urged upon me at the same time tipping out a quantity of anathemas on doctors and physic. …
He is a cynic. He scoffs at the medical profession, the Law, the Church, the Press. Every man is guilty until he is proved innocent. The Premier is an unscrupulous character, the Bishop a salacious humbug. No doctor will cure, for it pays him to keep you ill. Every clergyman puts the Sunday-school teacher in the family way. His mouth is permanently distorted by cynicism.
He is vain and believes all women are in love with him. When playing the Gallant, he turns on a special voice, wears white spats, and looks like a Newmarket “Crook.”
“I lost my bus,” a girl says to him. “Lost your bust,” he answers, in broad Scotch. “I can’t see that you’ve done that.” … His sexual career has been a remarkable one, he claiming to have brought many women to bed, and actually to have lain with women of almost all European nationalities, for he has been a great traveller. …
This man is my devoted friend! … And truth to tell I get on with him better than I do with most people. I like his gamey flavour, his utter absence of self-consciousness, and his doggy loyalty to myself—his weaker brother. He may be depraved in his habits, coarse in his language, boorish in his manners, ludicrous in the wrongness of all his views. But I like him just because he is so hopeless. I get on with him because it is so impossible to reclaim him—my missionary spirit is not intrigued. If he only dabbled in vice (for an experiment), if he had pale, watery ideas about current literature—if—to use his own favourite epithet—he were genteel, I should quarrel.
October 30
Having developed a passion for a piece of sculpture by R. Boeltzig called the Reifenwerferin—the most beautiful figure of a woman. I am already devoted to Rodin’s Kiss and have a photo of it framed in my bedroom. Have written to Bruciani’s.
I suspect that my growing appreciation of the plastic art is with me only distilled sensuality. I enjoy my morning bath for the same reason. My bath is a daily baptism. I revel in the pleasure of the pain of the cold water. I whistle gleefully because I am clean and cool and nude early in the morning with the sun still low, before the day has been stained by clothes, dirt, pain, exasperation, death. … How I love myself as I rub myself down!—the cool, pink skin—I could eat it! I want to be all day in a cold bath to enjoy the pain of mortifying the flesh—it is so beautiful, so soft, so inscrutable—if I cut out chunks of it, it would only bleed.
November 8
The other morning R⸺ said hyperbolically that he hadn’t slept all night for fear that, before he had time to put an arresting hand on my shoulder and say “Don’t,” I might have gone and become “Entangled.” …
… No, I’m as firm as a rock, my dear. But in imagination the affair was continued as follows—
She: “I am fond of you, you know.”
He: “I wish you wouldn’t say these things to me—they’re quite embarrassing.”
She: “Oh! my dear, I’m not serious, you know—you’re such a vain young man.”
He: “Well, it’s equally embarrassing anyway.”
She: “Then I am serious.”
Tears.
I say: “I wish you would take me only for what I am—a blackguard with no good intentions, yet no very evil ones—but still a blackguard, whom you seem to find has engaging manners.”
I breathe freely hoping to have escaped this terrible temptation and turn to go. But she, looking up smiling through a curtain of wet eyelashes, asks—
“Won’t the blackguard stop a little longer?” In a moment my earth works, redoubts, and bastions fall down, I rush forward impetuously into her arms shouting, “I will, I will, I will as long as for eternity.”
(Curtain.)
I dramatised this little picture and much more last night before going to sleep when I was in a fever. I should succumb at once to the first really skilful coquette.
November 9
We played Ludo together this evening and she won 2s. 6d. Handsomely gowned in black and wearing black ornaments, she sat with me in the lamplight on the sofa in the Morris Room, with the Ludo board between us placed on a large green cushion. Her face was white as parchment and her hair seemed an ebony black. I lolled in the opposite corner, a thin, elongated youth, with fair hair all stivered up, dressed in a light-brown lounge suit with a good trouser crease, a soft linen collar and—a red tie! Between us, on its green cushion the Ludo board with its brilliantly coloured squares:—all of it set before a background formed by the straight-backed, rectangular, settle-like sofa, with a charming covering which went with the rest of the scheme.
“Rather decorative,” ⸻ remarked in an audible voice, turning her head on one side and quizzing. I can well believe it was. She looked wholly admirable.
November 21
Can’t get rid of my cough. I have so many things to do—I am living in a fever of haste to get them done. Yet this cough hinders me. There is always something which drags me back from the achievement of my desires. It’s like a nightmare; I see myself struggling violently to escape from a monster which draws continuously nearer, until his shadow falls across my path, when I begin to run and find my legs tied, etc. The only difference is that mine is a nightmare from which I never wake up. The haven of successful accomplishment remains as far off as ever. Oh! make haste.
November 29
The English Review has returned my Essay!—This is a keen disappointment to me. “I wish I could use this, but I am really too full,” the Editor writes. To be faintly encouraged and delicately rejected—why I prefer the printed form.
December 1
Renewed my cold—I do nothing all day but blow my nose, cough, and curse Austin Harrison.
M⸺ thinks the lungs are all right. “There is nothing there, I think,” said he, this morning. Alleluia! I’ve had visions of consumption for weeks past and M⸺ himself has been expecting it. I always just escape: I always almost get something, do something, go somewhere, I have dabbled in a variety of diseases, but never got one downright—but only enough to make me feel horribly unfit and very miserable without the consolation of being able to regard myself as the heroic victim of some incurable disorder. Instead of being Stevenson with tuberculosis, I’ve only been Jones with dyspepsia. So, too, in other directions, big events have always just missed me: by Herculean efforts I succeeded in giving up newspaper journalism and breaking through that steel environment—but only to become an Entomologist! I once achieved success in an Essay in the Academy, which attracted attention—a debut, however, that never developed. I had not quite arrived. It is always not quite.
Yesterday, I received a state visit from the Editor of the Furniture Record seeking advice on how to eradicate mites from upholstering! I received him ironically—but little did he understand.
I shot up like a ball on a bagatelle board all steamy into zoology (my once beloved science) but at once rolled dead into the very low hole of Economic Entomology! Curse. … Why can’t I either have a first-rate disease or be a first-rate zoologist?
Now just think what a much better figure I should have cut, from the artistic view point, had I remained a newspaper reporter who had taught himself prodigious embryology out of F. M. Balfour’s Textbook, who had cut sections of fowls’ eggs and newt embryos with a hand microtome, who had passionately dissected out the hidden, internal anatomy of a great variety of animals, who could recite Wiedersheim’s Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates and patter off the difference between a nephridium and a coelomic duct without turning a hair—or the phylogenetic history (how absorbing!) of the kidney—pronephros, mesonephros and metanephros and all the ducts! … All this, over now and wasted. My hardly-won knowledge wrenched away is never brought into use—it lies piled up in my brain rotting. I could have become a first-rate comparative anatomist.
December 3
Cold better. So back at work—gauging ale at Dunfermline as R⸺ puts it.
December 9
In the evening found it quite impossible to stay in the house any longer: some vague fear drove me out. I was alarmed to be alone or to be still. It is my cough, I think.
Had two glasses of port at the Kensington Hotel, conversed with the barmaid, and then came home.
December 10
“Don’t be an old fossil,” she said to me tonight, irrelevantly.
“Apropos of what?” I inquired.
“Mother, here’s W⸺ proposing to E⸺! Do come,” cried ⸻, with intent to confuse. I laughed heartlessly.
Dear, dear, where will it all end? It’s a sad business when you fall in love with a girl you don’t like.
December 26
Spent a romping day at the Flat. Kissed her sister twice under the mistletoe, and in the evening went to a cinema. After supper made a mock heroic speech and left hilarious.