Later. (In E.'s handwriting.)
Yesterday we shifted into a tiny cottage at half the rental of the other one, and situated about two miles further out from the village… A wholly ideal and beautiful little cottage you may say. But a "camouflaged" cottage. For in spite of the happiness of its exterior it contains just now two of the most dejected mortals even in this present sorrow-laden world.
September 30.
Last night, E – sitting on the bed by me, burst into tears. It was my fault. "I can stand a good deal but there must come a breaking point." Poor, poor girl, my heart aches for you.
I wept too, and it relieved us to cry. We blew our noses. "People who cry in novels," E – observed with detachment, "never blow their noses. They just weep." … But the thunder clouds soon come up again.
October 1.
The immediate future horrifies me.
October 2.
Poushkin (as we have named the cat) is coiled up on my bed, purring and quite happy. It does me good to see him.
But consider: A paralytic, a screaming infant, two women, a cat and a canary, shut up in a tiny cottage with no money, the war still on, and food always scarcer day by day. "Give us this day, our daily bread."
I want to be loved – above all, I want to love. My great danger is lest I grow maudlin and say petulantly, "Nobody loves me, nobody cares." I must have more courage and more confidence in other people's good-nature. Then I can love more freely.
October 3.
I am grateful to-day for some happy hours plucked triumphantly from under the very nose of Fate, and spent in the warm sun in the garden. They carried me out at 12, and I stayed till after tea-time. A Lark sang, but the Swallows – dear things – have gone. E – picked two Primroses. I sat by some Michaelmas Daisies and watched the Bees, Flies, and Butterflies.
October 6.
In fits of maudlin self-compassion I try to visualise Belgium, Armenia, Serbia, etc., and usually cure myself thereby.
October 12.
It is winter – no autumn this year. Of an evening we sit by the fire and enjoy the beautiful sweet-smelling wood-smoke, and the open hearth with its big iron bar carrying pot-hook and hanger. E – knits warm garments for the Baby, and I play Chopin, César-Franck hymns, Three Blind Mice (with variations) on a mouth-organ, called "The Angels' Choir," and made in Germany… You would pity me would you? I am lonely, penniless, paralysed, and just turned twenty-eight. But I snap my fingers in your face and with equal arrogance I pity you. I pity you your smooth-running good luck and the stagnant serenity of your mind. I prefer my own torment. I am dying, but you are already a corpse. You have never really lived. Your body has never been flayed into tingling life by hopeless desire to love, to know, to act, to achieve. I do not envy you your absorption in the petty cares of a commonplace existence.
Do you think I would exchange the communion with my own heart for the toy balloons of your silly conversation? Or my curiosity for your flickering interests? Or my despair for your comfortable Hope? Or my present tawdry life for yours as polished and neat as a new three-penny bit? I would not. I gather my mantle around me and I solemnly thank God that I am not as some other men are.
I am only twenty-eight, but I have telescoped into those few years a tolerably long life: I have loved and married, and have a family; I have wept and enjoyed; struggled and overcome, and when the hour comes I shall be content to die.
October 14 to 20.
Miserable.
October 21.
Self-disgust.
FINIS
[Barbellion died on December 31.]
SYNOPSIS
PART I: AT HOME
Rambles and bathes, 2, 3, 4, 9, 11, 20, 37, 45, 46, 48, 49
Natural History and Zoology, 9, 12, 13, 20, 29
Leaves school, 10
Newspaper reporting, 17, 19
Ambition, 8, 10, 13, 26, 29
Calf-love, 8, 12, 23, 28
The Wesleyan Minister Microscopist, 18
Conversation with Prof. Herdman, 46
Ill-health, 10, 24, 25, 35, 42, 48 (Jul. 31)
Heart attacks, 33, 36
On Death, 33, 38, 43, 44
Sits for British Museum exam., 29
Failure, 30, 31, 32
Appointment to Laboratory at Plymouth, 32
Everything "ghostly, unreal, enigmatic," 29, 33
Self-consciousness, 27, 40
The Poppy, 43
Appointment resigned and his father's illness, 34
His father's death, 50, 51
Success and appointment to B.M., 55
A youthful Passion, 56, 57
PART II: IN LONDON
Disillusionment, 59, 61, 93, 94, 132, 178, 185
Life in a boarding-house, 63, 78, 79, 94, 99, 107
Ambition, 71, 73, 109
An affair in a taxicab, 75
Self-disgust, 77
In love, 78, 96, 107
Conversations: (a) with E., 65, 69, 70, 75, 76, 79, 95, 96, 99, 104, 151, 152
(b) with H., 82, 83
(c) with R., 131, 140, 141, 142, 154, 155, 165,
Ill-health, 59, 62, 69, 72, 74, 100, 107, 110, 114, 134-5, 153, 156
On Death, 62, 63, 84, 88
Heart attacks, 71, 72, 120, 122
Nervous breakdown, 80, 81, 82
Meets an old love, 86, 87
Holidays: (a) at C – , by the sea in North – , 65, 66, 67
(b) at home, 82
(c) in Brittany and on Dartmoor (riding a pony), 97
Life in rooms, 102, 107, 108, 114, 138, 148, 149, 153
His brother, 121, 206
Discussions on marriage, 123, 124
In his sitting-room, 162
The fascination of London, 74, 142-145
(a) Petticoat Lane, 163
(b) Rotten Row, 176
Goes to concerts, 127, 161, 172
A lovers' quarrel, 126
He struggles with himself, 135, 137, 138
Engaged, 150, 158
Fears his inconstancy, 159, 185
Self-analysis, 167 et seq., 182, 183
Day-dreams: Life a dream, 178, 179, 188
The War, 182
Holidays: (a) on a Buckinghamshire farm, 191-205
(b) at the Lakes, 215-217
Should a husband keep a private journal? 210
Marriage, 205, 209, 215
PART III: MARRIAGE
Zeppelin raid and influenza, 222
Living in the country, 223, 227, 228
Reads his doctor's certificate after visit to recruiting-office, 225, 238
Self-disgust, 223, 224, 225, 247, 250 (nude), 267
Mental agony, 226, 227
Conversations: with R., 229
with Scarabees, 230, 239, 243
Halcyon days, 233, 235, 238
A natural idiot climbs a stile on uplands, 240
Tension, 250, 252
The War, 237 (Jutland), 242, 247, 248, 249
Another nervous breakdown, 253
How E. knew all the time, 255, 256
Self-compassion, 251, 304
Home ill, 257 ("in the doldrums"), 259, 265
Returns to work, 278
Ill again, 285
From an invalid's view-point, 292, 293 (by his bedroom window)
Post-mortem affairs, 291
Resigns appointment, 294, 299
Self-consciousness and self-dramatization, 255, 265, 267
A badly articulated skeleton, 274
Cold weather in January, 276, 277, 278
On Death, 275, 283, 286, 291
His phosphorescent Journals, 291
Morphia and laudanum, 280, 300
Great misery, 303, 305