Upon the small head of another customer, he would squash down his largest sized cap saying at once,—
"There, you look the finest gentleman—oh! ah! a little too large."
At which we all laughed, the customer looked silly, but took no offence.
"Try this," yells the skipper above the storm, and takes off his own cap. "Oh! ye needn't be afraid—I washed my hair last—year." (Laughter.)
Then to his partner, the Jew on the other side of the stall, "Oh! what a face you've got. Here! 6d. for any one who can tell me what it is. Why not take it to the trenches and get it smashed in?"
The Jew wore spectacles and had a soft ingratiating voice and brown doe-like eyes—a Jew in every respect. "Oh!" says he, in the oleaginous Semitic way, and accurately taking up his cue (for all this was rehearsed patter), "my wife says 'my face is my fortune.'"
"No wonder you're so hard up and 'ave got to take in lodgers. What's yer name?"
"John Jones," in a demure wheedling voice.
"Hoo—that's not your name in your own bloody country—I expect it's Hullabullinsky."
"Do you know what my name really is?"
"No."
"It's Assenheimopoplocatdwizlinsky Kovorod." (Loud laughter.)
"I shall call you 'ass' for short."
I was laughing loudly at these two clowns and the skipper observing as much, shouted out to me,—
"Parlez-vous Francois, M'sieur?"
"Oui, oui," said I.
"Ah! lah, you're one of us—oh! what a game! what a bees' nest," and all the time he went on selling caps and chucking them at the purchasers.
Perhaps one of the most extraordinary things I saw was a stream of young men who, one after another, came up to a stall, paid a penny and swallowed a glass of "nerve tonic"—a green liquid syphoned out of a large jar—warranted a safe cure for
"Inward weakness, slightest flurry or body oppressed."
Another man was pulling teeth and selling tooth powder. Some of the little urchins' teeth, after he had cleaned them as a demonstration, were much whiter than their faces or his. This was "the original Chas. Assenheim."
Mrs. Meyers, "not connected with any one else of the same name in the Lane" was selling eels at 2d., 3d. and 6d. and doing a brisk trade too.
But I should go on for hours if I were to tell everything seen in this remarkable lane during an hour and a half on a Sunday morning. Each stall-holder sells only one kind of article—caps or clocks or songs, braces, shawls, indecent literature, concertinas, gramophones, coats, pants, reach-me-downs, epergnes. The thoroughfare was crowded with people (I saw two Lascars in red fez caps) inspecting the goods displayed and attentively observed by numerous policemen. The alarm clocks were all going off, each gramophone was working a record (a different one!) and every tradesman shouting his wares—a perfect pandemonium.
December31.
A Conversation
"There is that easily calculable element in your nature, dear boy," I said, "by which you forego the dignity of a free-willed human being and come under an inflexiblenatural law. I can anticipate your movements, intentions, and opinions long beforehand. For example, I know quite well that every Saturday morning will see you withThe New Statesmanunder your arm; I know that the words 'Wagner' or 'Shaw' uttered slowly and deliberately in your ear will produce a perfectly definite reaction."
"I bet you can't predict what I am going to buy now,"
R—— replied gaily, advancing to the newspaper stall.
He bought thePink 'Unand I laughed....
"And so you readPragmatism," he mused, "while the fate of the Empire stands in the balance."
"Yes," said I, "and the Paris Academy of Sciences were discussing the functions ofθ[Greek: Thèta] and the Polymorphism of Antarctic diatoms last September when the Germans stood almost at the gates of Paris."
This was a lucky stroke for me, for he knew he was rubbing me on the raw. We are, of course, great friends, but sometimes we get on one another's nerves.
"I am polychromatic," I declaimed, "rhetorical, bass. You—besides being a bally fool—are of a pretty gray colour, a baritone and you paint in water-colours."
"Whereas you, of course, would paint in blood?" he answered facetiously.
His Oxford education has a firm hold on him. He says for example, "e converso" instead of "on the other hand" and "entre nous" for "between ourselves." He labels his paragraphsα, β, γ, instead of a, b, c, and quotes Juvenal, knows Paris and Naples, visits the Alps for the winter sports, all in the approved manner of dons.
Not infrequently he visits the East End to Study "how the poor live," he lectures at Toynbee Hall, and calls the proletariat "the prolly." In fact, he does everything according to the regulations, being a socialist and an agnostic, a follower of Shaw and a devotee of Bunyan. "Erotic" he is careful to pronounceeròticto show he knows Greek, and the "Duma," theDumà, tho' he doesn't know Russian. Like any don, he is always ready to discuss and give an opinion on any sub- supra- or circum-lunary subject from bimetallism to the Symphony as an art-form.
"That's a dominant fifth," I said to him the other day; no answer.
"You ignorant devil," I said, "you don't know what a dominant fifth is!"
We made grimaces at one another.
"Who's the Master of the Mint?" I asked him. "That is an easy one."
"The Chancellor of the Exchequer," was the prompt reply.
"Oh! that's right," I said sarcastic and crestfallen. "Now tell me the shortest verse in the Bible and the date of Rameses II."
We laughed. R—— is a very clever man and the most extraordinarily versatile man I know. He is bound to make his mark. His danger is—too many irons in the fire. Here are some of his occupations and acquirements: Art (etching, drypoint, water-colours), music (a charming voice), classics, French, German, Italian (both speaking and reading knowledge), biology, etc., etc. He is for ever titillating his mind with some new thing. "For God's sake, do leave it alone—you simply rag your mind to death. Put it out to grass—go thro' an annual season of complete abstinence from knowledge—an intellectual Lent."
No one more than he enjoys my ragging him like this—and I do it rather well.
[1]"I could eat all the elephants of Hindustan and pick my teeth with the Spire of Strassburg Cathedral."
[1]"I could eat all the elephants of Hindustan and pick my teeth with the Spire of Strassburg Cathedral."
[2]See January 2nd, 1915.
[2]See January 2nd, 1915.
January1.
I have grown so ridiculously hypercritical and fastidious that I will refuse a man's invitation to dinner because he has watery blue eyes, or hate him for a mannerism or an impediment or affectation in his speech. Some poor devil who has not heard of Turner or Debussy or Dostoieffsky I gird at with the arrogance of a knowledgeable youth of 17. Some oddity who should afford a sane mind endless amusement, I write off as aInsus naturæand dismiss with a flourish of contempt. My intellectual arrogance—excepting at such times as I become conscious of it and pullmyself up—is incredible. It is incredible because I have no personal courage and all this pride boils up behind a timid exterior. I quail often before stupid but over-bearing persons who consequently never realise my contempt of them. Then afterwards, I writhe to think I never stood up to this fool; never uttered an appropriate word to interfere with another's nauseating self-love. It exasperates me to be unable to give a Roland for an Oliver—even servants and underlings "tick me off"—to fail always in sufficient presence of mind to make the satisfying rejoinder or riposte. I suffer from such a savageamour proprethat I fear to enter the lists with a man I dislike on account of the mental anguish I should suffer if he worsted me. I am therefore bottled up tight—both my hates and loves. For a coward is not only afraid to tell a man he hates him, but is nervous too of letting go of his feeling of affection or regard lest it be rejected or not returned. I shudder to think of such remarks as (referring to me), "He's one of my admirers, you know" (sardonically), or, "I simply can't get rid of him."
If however my corkdoescome out, there is an explosion, and placid people occasionally marvel to hear violent language streaming from my lips and nasty acid and facetious remarks.
Of course, to intimate friends (only about three persons in the wide, wide world), I can always give free vent to my feelings, and I do so in privacy with that violence in which a weak character usually finds some compensation for his intolerable self-imposed reserve and restraint in public. I can never marvel enough at the ineradicable turpitude of my existence, at mydouble-facedness, and the remarkable contrast between the face I turn to the outside world and the face my friends know. It's like leading a double existence or artificially constructing a puppet to dangle before the crowd while I fulminate behind the scenes. If only I had the moral courage to play my part in life—to take the stage and be myself, to enjoy the delightful sensation of making my presence felt, instead of this vapourish mumming—then this Journal would bequite unnecessary. For to me self-expression is a necessity of life, and what cannot be expressed one way must be expressed in another. When colossal egotism is driven underground, whether by a steely surface environment or an unworkable temperament or as in my case by both, you get a truly remarkable result, and the victim a truly remarkable pain—the pain one might say of continuously unsuccessful attempts at parturition.
It is perhaps not the whole explanation to say that my milky affability before, say bores or clods is sheer personal cowardice.... It is partly real affability. I am so glad to have opposite me some one who is making himself pleasant and affable and sympathetic that I forget for the moment that he is an unconscionable time-server, a sycophant, lick-spittle, toady, etc. My first impulse is always to credit folk with being nicer, cleverer, more honest and amiable than they are. Then, on reflection, I discover unpleasing characteristics, I detect their little motives, and hate myself for not speaking. The fellow is intolerable, why did I not tell him so? Bitter recriminations from my critical self upon my flabby amiable half.
On the whole, then, I lead a pretty disgraceful inner life—excepting when I pull myself together and smile benignly on all things with a philosophical smugness, such as is by no means my mood at this present moment. I am so envious that a reprint of one of Romney's Ramus girls sends me into a dry tearless anger—for the moment till I turn over the next page.... Inwardly I was exacerbated this morning when R—— recited, "Come and have a tiddle at the old Brown Bear," and explained how a charming "young person" sang this at breakfast the other morning. It was simplytoocharming for him to hear.
To-night as I brushed my hair, I decided I was quite good-looking, andI believeI mused that E—— was really a lucky girl.... All that is the matter with me is a colossal conceit and a colossal discontent, qualities exaggerated where a man finds himself in an environment which ....
You observant people will notice that this explanation is something of a self-defence whereby the virtue goes out of my confession. I plead guilty, but great and unprecedented provocation as well. Intense pride of individuality forbids that I should ever be other than, shall I say, amiably disposed towards myselfau fond, however displeased I may be with my environment. It is indeed impossible without sending him to a lunatic asylum ever to knock a man off the balance of his self-esteem.... A man's loyalty to himself is the most pig-headed thing imaginable.
January2.
The Fire Bogey
"This Box contains Manuscripts. One guinea will be paid to any one who in case of danger from fire saves it from damage or loss."
Signed: W.N.P. BARBELLION.
I have had this printed in large black characters on a card, framed and nailed to my "coffin" of Journals. I told the printer first to sayTwo Guineas, but he suggested that One Guinea was quite enough. I agreed but wondered how the devilheknew what the Journals were worth—nobody knows.
Next month, I expect I shall have a "hand" painted on the wall and pointing towards the box. And the month after that I shall hire a fireman to be on duty night and day standing outside No. 101 in a brass helmet and his hatchet up at the salute.
These precious Journals! Supposing I lost them! I cannot imagine the anguish it would cause me. It would be the death of my real self and as I should take no pleasure in the perpetuation of my flabby, flaccid, anæmic, amiable puppet-self, I should probably commit suicide.
August7.
Harvey who discovered the circulation of the blood also conducted a great many investigations into the Anatomy and development of insects. But all his MSS. and drawingsdisappeared in the fortunes of war, and one half of his life work thus disappeared. This makes me feverish, living as I do in Armageddon!
Again, all Malpighi's pictures, furniture, books and MSS. were destroyed in a lamentable fire at his house in Bononia, occasioned it is said by the negligence of his old wife.
About 1618, Ben Jonson suffered a similar calamity thro' a fire breaking out in his study. Many unpublished MSS. perished.
A more modern and more tragic example I found recently in the person of an Australian naturalist, Dr. Walter Stimpson, who lost all his MSS., drawings, and collections in the great fire of Chicago, and was so excoriated by this irreparable misfortune that he never recovered from the shock, and died the following year a broken man and unknown.
Of course the housemaid who lit the fire with theFrench Revolutionis known to all, as well as Newton's "Fido, Fido, you little know what you have done."
There are many dangers in preserving the labours of years in MS. form. Samuel Butler (ofErewhon) advised writing in copying ink and then pressing off a second copy to be kept in another and separate locality. My own precautions for these Journals are more elaborate. Those who know about it think I am mad. I wonder.... But I dare say I am a pathetic fool—an incredible self-deceiver!
Anyhow—the "coffin" of raw material I sent down to T—— while I retain the two current volumes. This is to avoid Zeppelins. E—— took the "coffin" down for me on her way home from school, and at Taunton, inquisitive porters mistaking it, I suppose, for an infant's coffin carried it reverently outside the station and laid it down. She caught them looking at it just in time before her train left. Under her instructions they seized it by the brass handles and carried it back again. I sit now and with a good deal of curiosity fondle the idea of porters carrying about my Journals of confession. It's like being tickledin the palm of the hand.... Two volumes of abstracted entries I keep here, and, as soon as I am married, I intend to make a second copy of these.... Then all in God's good time I intend getting a volume ready for publication.
January30.
Hearing Beethoven
To the Queen's Hall and heard Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies.
Before the concert began I was in a fever. I kept on saying to myself, "I am going to hear the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies." I regarded myself with the most ridiculous self-adulation—I smoothed and purred over myself—a great contented Tabby cat—and all because I was so splendidly fortunate as to be about to hear Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies.
It certainly upset me a little to find there were so many other people who were singularly fortunate as well, and it upset me still more to find some of them knitting and some reading newspapers as if they waited for sausage and mashed.
How I gloried in the Seventh! I can't believe there was any one present who gloried in it as I did! To be processing majestically up the steps of a great, an unimaginable palace (in the "Staircase" introduction), led by Sir Henry, is to have had at least a crowded ten minutes of glorious life—a suspicion crossed the mind at one time "Good Heavens, they're going to knight me." I cannot say if that were their intentions. But I escaped however....
I love the way in which a beautiful melody flits around the Orchestra and its various components like a beautiful bird.
January19.
An Average Day
After a morning of very mixed emotions and more than one annoyance ... at last sat down to lunch and a little peace and quiet with R——. We began by quotingverse at one another in open competition. Of course neither of us listened to the other's verses. We merely enjoyed the pleasure of recollecting and repeating our own. I began with Tom Moore's "Row gently here, my Gondolier." R—— guessed the author rightly at once and fidgeted until he burst out with, "The Breaths of kissing night and day"—to me an easy one. I gave, "The Moon more indolently sleeps to-night" (Baudelaire), and in reply he did a great stroke by reciting some of the old French of Frangois Villon which entirely flummuxed me.
I don't believe we really love each other, but we cling to each other out of ennui and discover in each other a certain cold intellectual sympathy.
At the pay desk (Lyons' is our rendezvous) we joked with the cashier—a cheerful, fat little girl, who said to R—— (indicating me),—
"He's a funny boy, isn't he?"
"Dangerous," chirped R——, and we laughed. In the street we met an aged, decrepit newsvendor—very dirty and ragged—but his voice was unexpectedly fruity.
"British Success," he called, and we stopped for the sake of the voice.
"I'm not interested," I said—as an appetiser.
"What! Not.... Just one sir: I haven't sold a single copy yet, and I've a wife and four children."
"That's nothing to me—I've three wives and forty children," I remarked.
"What!" in affected surprise, turning to R——, "he's Brigham Young from Salt Lake City. Yes I know it—I've been there myself and been dry ever since. Give us a drink, sir—just one."
In consideration of his voice we gave him 2d. and passed on....
After giving a light to a Belgian soldier whose cigarette had gone out, farther along we entered a queer old music shop where they sell flageolets, serpents, clavichords, and harps. We had previously made an appointment with the man to have Schubert's Unfinished Symphony played to us, so as to recall one or two of the melodies which wecan't recall and it drives us crazy. "What is that one in the second movement which goes like this?" and R—— whistled a fragment. "I don't know," I said, "but let's go in here and ask." In the shop, a youth was kind enough to say that if we cared to call next day, Madame A——, the harp player would be home and would be ready to play us the symphony.
So this morning, before Madame's appearance, this kind and obliging youth put a gramophone record of it on, to which we listened like two intelligent parrots with heads sideways. Presently, the fat lady harpist appeared and asked us just what we wanted to find out—a rather awkward question for us, as we did not want to "find out" anything excepting how the tunes went.
I therefore explained that as neither of us had sisters or wives, and we both wanted, etc.... so would she...? In response, she smiled pleasantly and played us the second movement on a shop piano. Meanwhile, Henry the boy, hid himself behind the instruments at the rear of the shop and as we signed to her she would say,—
"What's that, Henry?"
And Henry would duly answer from his obscurity, "Wood wind," or "Solo oboe," or whatever it was, and the lad really spoke with authority. In this way, I began to find out something about the work. Before I left, I presented her with a copy of the score, which she did not possess and because she would not accept any sort of remuneration.
"Won't you put your name on it?" she inquired.
I pointed gaily to the words "Ecce homo," which I had scribbled across Schubert's name and said, "There you are." Madame smiled incredulously and we said, "Good-bye."
It was a beautifully clement almost springlike day, and at the street corner, in a burst of joyousness, we each bought a bunch of violets of an old woman, stuck them on the ends of our walking-sticks, and marched off with them in triumphant protest to the B.M. Carried over our shoulders, our flowers amused the police and ——, who scarcely realised the significance of the ritual. "This ismy protest," said R——, "against the war. It's like Oscar Wilde's Sunflower."
On the way, we were both bitterly disappointed at a dramatic meeting between a man and woman of the artizan class which instead of beginning with a stormy, "Robert, where's the rent, may I ask?" fizzled out into, "Hullo, Charlie, why youarea stranger."
At tea in the A.B.C. shop, we had a violent discussion on Socialism, and on the station platform, going home, I said that before marriage I intended saving up against the possibility of divorce—a domestic divorce fund.
"Very dreadful," said R—— with mock gravity, "to hear a recently affianced young man talk like that."
... What should I do then? Marry? I suppose so. Shadows of the prison-house. At first I said I ought not to marry for two years. Then when I am wildly excited with her I say "next week." We could. There are no arrangements to be made. All her furniture—flat, etc. But I feel we ought to wait until the War is over.
At dinner-time to-night I was feverish to do three things at once: write out my day's Journal, eat my food, and read theJournalof Marie Bashkirtseff. Did all three—but unfortunately not at once, so that when I was occupied with one I would surreptitiously cast a glance sideways at the other—and repined.
After dinner, paid a visit to the —— and found Mrs. —— playing Patience. I told her that 12,000 lives had been lost in the great Italian earthquake. Still going on dealing out the cards, she said in her gentle voice that that was dreadful and still absorbed in her cards inquired if earthquakes had aught to do with the weather.
"An earthquake must be a dreadful thing," she gently piped, as she abstractedly dealt out the cards for a new game in a pretty Morris-papered room in Kensington.
January20.
At a Public Dinner
... The timorous man presently took out his cigarette-case and was going to take out a cigarette, when herecollected that he ought first to offer one to the millionaire on his right. Fortunately the cigarette case was silver and the cigarettes appeared—from my side of the dinner-table—to be fat Egyptians. Yet the timorous and unassuming bug-hunter hesitated palpably. Ought he to offer his cigarettes? He thought of his own balance at the bank and then of the millionaire's and trembled. The case after all was only silver and the cigarettes were not much more than a halfpenny each. Was it not impertinent? He sat a moment studying the open case which he held in both hands like a hymn book, while the millionaire ordered not wines—but a bass! At last courage came, and he inoffensively pushed the cigarettes towards his friend.
"No, thanks!" smiled the millionaire, "I don't smoke." And so, 'twas a unicorn dilemma after all.
February15.
Spent Xmas week at work in her studio, transcribing my Journals while she made drawings. All unbeknown to her I was copying out entries of days gone by—how scandalised she would be if...!
February22.
What an amazing Masque is Rotten Row on a Sunday morning! I sat on a seat there this morning and watched awhile.
It was most exasperating to be in this kaleidoscope of human life without the slightest idea as to who they all were. One man in particular, I noticed—a first-class "swell"—whom I wanted to touch gently on the arm, slip a half-a-crown into his hand and whisper, "There, tell me all about yourself."
Such "swells" there were that out in the fairway, my little cockle-shell boat was wellnigh swamped. To be in the wake of a really magnificent Duchess simply rocks a small boat in an alarming fashion. I leaned over my paddles and gazed up. They steamed past unheeding,but I kept my nerve all right and pulled in and out quizzing and observing.
It is nothing less than scandalous that here I am aged 25 with no means of acquainting myself with contemporary men and women even of my own rank and station. The worst of it is, too, that I have no time to lose—in my state of health. This accursed ill-health cuts me off from everything. I make pitiful attempts to see the world around me by an occasional visit (wind, weather, and health permitting) to Petticoat Lane, the Docks, Rotten Row, Leicester Square, or the Ethical Church. To-morrow I purpose going to the Christian Scientists'. Meanwhile, the others participate in Armageddon.
February23.
Looking for Lice at the Zoo
The other day went to the Zoological Gardens, and, by permission of the Secretary, went round with the keepers and searched the animals for ectoparasites.
Some time this year I have to make a scientific Report to the Zoological Society upon all the Lice which from time to time have been collected on animals dying in the gardens and sent me for study and determination.
We entered the cages, caught and examined several Tinamous,Rhinochetus, Eurypygia, and many more, to the tune of "The Policeman's Holiday" whistled by a Mynah! It was great fun.
Then we went into the Ostrich House and thoroughly searched two Kiwis. These, being nocturnal birds, were roosting underneath a heap of straw. When we had finished investigating their feathers, they ran back to their straw at once, the keeper giving them a friendly tap on the rear to hurry them up a bit. They are just like little old women bundling along.
The Penguins, of course, were the most amusing, and, after operating fruitlessly for some time on a troublesome Adèle, I was amused to find, on turning around, all the other Adèles clustered close around my feet in an attitude of mute supplication.
The Armadillo required all the strength of two keepers to hold still while I went over his carcass with lens and forceps. I was also allowed to handle and examine the Society's two specimens of that amazing creature theEchidna.
Balœniceps rexlike other royalty had to be approached decorously. He was a big, ill-tempered fellow, and quite unmanageable except by one keeper for whom he showed a preference. While we other conspirators hid ourselves outside, this man entered the house quietly and approached the bird with a gentle cooing sound. Then suddenly he grabbed the bill and held on. We entered at the same moment and secured the wings, and I began the search—without any luck. We must have made an amusing picture—three men holding on for dear life to a tall, grotesque bird with an imperial eye, while a fourth searched the feathers for parasites!
February28.
What a boon is Sunday! I can get out of bed just when the spirit moves me, dress and bath leisurely, even with punctilio. How nice to dawdle in the bath with a cigarette, to hear the holiday sound of Church bells! Then comes that supreme moment when, shaven, clean, warm and hungry for breakfast and coffee, I stand a moment before the looking-glass and comb out my towzled hair with a parting as straight as a line in Euclid. That gives the finishing touch of self-satisfaction, and I go down to breakfast ready for the day's pleasure. I hate this weekday strain of having to be always each day at a set time in a certain place.
March3.
I often sit in my room at the B.M. and look out at the traffic with a glassy, mesmerised face—a fainéant. How different from that extremely busy youth who came to London in 1912. Say—could that lad be I? How many hours do I waste day-dreaming. This morning I dreamed and dreamed and could not stop dreaming—I had not thewill to shake myself down to my task.... My memories simply trooped the colour.
It surprised me to find how many of them had gone out of my present consciousness and with what poignancy of feeling I recognised them again! How selfishly for the most part we all live in our present selves or in the selves that are to be.
Then I raced thro' all sorts of future possibilities—oh! when and how is it all going to end? How do you expect me to settle down to scientific research with all this internal unrest! The scientific man above all should possess the "quiet mind in all changes of fortune"—Sir Henry Wotton'sHow happy is he born and taught.
The truth is I am a hybrid: a mixture of two very distinct temperaments and they are often at war. To keep two different natures and two different mental habits simultaneously at work is next to impossible. Consequently plenty of waste and fever and—as I might have discovered earlier for myself—success almost out of the question. If only I were pure-bred science or pure-bred art!
March4.
Life is a dream and we are all somnambuloes. We know that for a fact at all times when we are most intensely alive—at crises of unprecedented change, in sorrow or catastrophe, or in any unusual incident brought swiftly to a close like a vision!
I sit here writing this—a mirage! Who am I? No one can say. What am I? "A soap-bubble hanging from a reed."
Every man is an inexhaustible treasury of human personality. He can go on burrowing in it for an eternity if he have the desire—and a taste for introspection. I like to keep myself well within the field of the microscope, and, with as much detachment as I can muster, to watch myself live, to report my observations of what I say, feel, think.In default of others, I am myself my own spectator and self-appreciator—critical, discerning, vigilant, fond!—my own stupid Boswell, shrewd if silly. This spectator of mine, it seems to me, must be a very moral gentleman and eminently superior. His incessant attentions, while I go on my way misconducting myself, goad me at times into a surly, ill-tempered outbreak, like Dr. Johnson. I hate being shadowed and reported like this. Yet on the whole—like old Samuel again—I am rather pleased to be Boswelled. It flatters me to know that at least one person takes an unremitting interest in all my ways.
And, mind you, there are people who have seen most things but have never seen themselves walking across the stage of life. If someone shows them glimpses of themselves they will not recognise the likeness. How do you walk? Do you know your own idiosyncrasies of gait, manner of speech, etc.?
I never cease to interest myself in the Gothic architecture of my own fantastic soul.[1]
March6.
The Punch and Judy Show
Spent a most delightful half-an-hour to-day reading an account in theEncyclopædia Britannica(one of my favourite books—it's so "gey disconnekkit") the history of the Punch and Judy Show. It's a delightful bit of antiquarian lore and delighted me the more because it had never occurred to me before that it had an ancient history. I am thoroughly proud of this recent acquisition of knowledge and as if it were a valuable freehold I have been showing it off saying, "Rejoice with me—see what I have got here." I fired it off first in detail at ——; and H—— and D—— will probably be my victims to-morrow. After all, it is a charming little cameo of history: compact, with plenty of scope for conjecture, theory, research, and just that combination of all three which would suit my taste and capacity if I had time for a Monograph.
March22
I waste much time gaping and wondering. During a walk or in a book or in the middle of an embrace, suddenly I awake to a stark amazement at everything. The bare fact of existence paralyses me—holds my mind in mort-main. To be alive is so incredible that all I do is to lie still and merely breathe—like an infant on its back in a cot. It is impossible to be interested in anything in particular while overhead the sun shines or underneath my feet grows a single blade of grass. "The things immediate to be done," says Thoreau, "I could give them all up to hear this locust sing." All my energies become immobilised, even my self-expression frustrated. I could not exactly master and describe how I feel during such moments.
March23.
Johnsonv.Yves Delage
I expect we have all of us at one time or another heard ourselves addressing to annoying, objectionable acquaintances some such stinging castigation as Hazlitt's letter to Gifford, or Burke's letter to a Noble Lord, or Johnson's letter to Lord Chesterfield, or Rousseau's letter to the Archbishop of Paris. If only I could indulge myself! At this moment I could glut my rancours on six different persons at least!
What a raging discontent I have suffered to-day! What cynicism, what bitterness of spirit, what envy, hate, exasperation, childish petulance, what pusillanimous feelings and desires, what crude efforts to flout simple, ingenuous folk with my own thwarted, repressed self-assertiveness!
A solemn fellow told me he had heard from Johnson who said he had already had much success from collecting in moss.[2]With an icy politeness I asked who Johnson was. Who the Hell is Johnson? As aquid pro quoI began to talk of Yves Delage, which left him as much in the dark as he left me. Our Gods differ, we have a different hierarchy.
"Well, how's your soul?" said R——, bursting in with a sardonic smile.
I gave him a despairing look and said:
"Oh! a pink one with blue spots," and he left me to my fate.
Had tea with the —— and was amazed to find on the music tray in the drawing-room of these inoffensive artists a copy of ——'s Memoir onSynapta. Within his hearing, I said, "Did you and Mrs. —— find this exciting reading?" And I held it up with a sneer. I felt I had laid bare a nerve and forthwith proceeded to make it twinge. ——, of course, was glib with an explanation, yet the question remains incalculable—just how pleased that young man is with himself.
After tea went out into the Studio and watched these two enthusiasts paint. I must have glowered at them. I—the energetic, ambitious, pushing youth—of necessity sitting down doing nought, as unconsidered as a child playing on the floor. I recollected my early days in my attic laboratory and sighed. Where is my energy now?
Mrs. —— plays Chopin divinely well. How I envied this man—to have a wife play you Chopin!
March24.
It is fortunate I am ill in one way for I need not make my mind up about this War. I am not interested in it—this filth and lunacy. I have not yet made up my mind about myself. I am so steeped in myself—in my moods, vapours, idiosyncrasies, so self-sodden, that I am unable to stand clear of the data, to marshal and classify the multitude of facts and thence draw the deduction what manner of man I am. I should like to know—if only as a matter of curiosity. So what in God's name am I? A fool, of course, to start with—but the rest of the diagnosis?
One feature is my incredible levity about serious matters. Nothing matters, provided the tongue is not furred. I have coquetted with death for so long now, and endured such prodigious ill-health that my main idea whenin a fair state of repair is to seize the passing moment and squeeze it dry. The thing that counts is to be drunken; as Baudelaire says, "One must be for ever drunken; that is the sole question of importance. If you would not feel the horrible burden of time that bruises your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease."
Another feature is my insatiable curiosity. My purpose is to move about in this ramshackle, old curiosity shop of a world sampling existence. I would try everything, meddle lightly with everything. Religions and philosophies I devour with a relish, Pragmatism and Bishop Berkeley and Bergson have been my favourite bagatelles in turn. My consciousness is a ragbag of things: all quips, quirks, and quillets, all excellent passes of pate, all the "obsolete curiosities of an antiquated cabinet" take my eye for a moment ere I pass on. In Sir Thomas Browne'sPseudodoxia, I am interested to find "why Jews do not stink, what is the superstition of sneezing after saluting, wherefore negroes are black," and so forth. There is a poetic appropriateness that in A.D. 1915 I should be occupied mainly in the study of Lice. I like the insolence of it.
They tell me that if the Germans won it would put back the clock of civilisation for a century. But what is a meagre 100 years? Consider the date of the first Egyptian dynasty! We are now only in A.D. 1915—surely we could afford to chuck away a century or two? Why not evacuate the whole globe and give the ball to the Boches to play with—just as an experiment to see what they can make of it. After all there is no desperate hurry. Have we a train to catch? Before I could be serious enough to fight, I should want God first to dictate to me his programme of the future of mankind.
March25.
Often in the middle of a quite vivid ten seconds of life, I find I have switched myself off from myself to make room for the person of a disinterested and usuallyvulgar spectator. Even in the thrill of a devotional kiss I have overheard myself saying, "Hot stuff, this witch." Or in a room full of agreeable and pleasant people, while I am being as agreeable as I know how, comes the whisper in a cynical tone, "These damned women." I am apparently a triple personality:
(1) The respectable youth.
(2) The foul-mouthed commentator and critic.
(3) The real but unknown I.
Curious that these three should live together amiably in the same tenement!
In a Crowd
A crowd makes egotists of us all. Most men find it repugnant to them to submerge themselves in a sea of their fellows. A silent, listening crowd is potentially full of commotion. Some poor devils suffocating and unable any longer to bear the strain will shout, "Bravo," or "Hear, hear," at every opportunity. At the feeblest joke we all laugh loudly, welcoming this means of self-survival. Hence the success of the Salvation Army. To be preached at and prayed for in the mass for long on end is what human nature can't endure in silence and a good deal of self can be smuggled by an experienced Salvationist into "Alleluia" or "The Lord be praised."
Naming Cockroaches
I had to determine the names of some exotic cockroaches to-day and finding it very difficult and dull raised a weak smile in two enthusiasts who know them as "Blattids" by rechristening them with great frivolity, "Fat 'eds."
"These bloody insects," I said to an Australian entomologist of rare quality.
"A good round oath," he answered quietly.
"If it was a square one it wouldn't roll properly," I said. It is nice to find an entomologist with whom I can swear and talk bawdy.
March26.
A Test of Happiness
The true test of happiness is whether you know what day of the week it is. A miserable man is aware of this even in his sleep. To be as cheerful and rosy-cheeked on Monday as on Saturday, and at breakfast as at dinner is to—well, make an ideal husband.
... It is a strange metempsychosis, this transformation of an enthusiast—tense, excitable, and active, into a sceptic, nerveless, ironical, and idle. That's what ill-health can do for a man. To be among enthusiasts—zoologists, geologists, entomologists—as I frequently am, makes me feel a very old man, regarding them as children, and provokes painful retrospection and sugary sentimentality over my past flame now burnt out.
I do wonder where I shall end up; what shall I be twenty years hence? It alarms me to find I am capable of such remarkable changes in character. I am fluid and can be poured into any mould. I have moments when I see in myself the most staggering possibilities. I could become a wife beater, and a drug-taker (especially the last). My curiosity is often such a ridiculous weakness that I have found myself playing Peeping Tom and even spying into private documents. In a railway carriage I will twist my neck and risk any rudeness to see the title of the book my neighbour is reading or how the letter she is reading begins.
April10.
"Why," asks Samuel Butler, "should not chicken be born and clergymen be laid and hatched? Or why, at any rate, should not the clergyman be born full grown and in Holy Orders not to say already beneficed? The present arrangement is not convenient ... it is not only not perfect but so much the reverse that we could hardly find words to express our sense of its awkwardness if we could look upon it with new eyes...."
As soon as we are born, if we could but get up, bathe,dress, shave, breakfast once for all, if we could "cut" these monotonous cycles of routine. If once the sun rose it would stay up, or once we were alive we were immortal!—how much forrarder we should all get—always at the heart of things, working without let or hindrance in a straight line for the millennium! Now we waltz along instead. Even planets die off and new ones come in their place. How infinitely wearisome it seems. When an old man dies what a waste, and when a baby is born what a redundancy of labour in front!
Two People I hate in particular
The man walking along the pavement in front of me giving me no room to pass under the satisfactory impression that he is the only being on the pavement or in the street, city, country, world, universe: and it all belongs to him even the moon and sun and stars.
The woman on the 'bus the other night—pouring out an interminable flow of poisonous chatter into the ear of her man—poor, exhausted devil who kept answering dreamily "Oom" and"Yes" and "Oom"—how I hated her for his sake!
April11.
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
If music moves me, it always generates images—a procession of apparently disconnected images in my mind. In the Fifth Symphony, for example, as soon as the first four notes are sounded and repeated, this magic population springs spontaneously into being. A nude, terror-stricken figure in headlong flight with hands pressed to the ears and arms bent at the elbows—a staring, bulgy-eyed mad-woman such as one sees in Raemakers' cartoons of the Belgian atrocities. A man in the first onset of mental agony on hearing sentence of death passed upon him. A wounded bird, fluttering and flopping in the grass. It is the struggle of a man with a steam-hammer—Fate. As tho' thro' the walls of a closed room—some mysterious room, a fearful spot—I crouch and listen and am consciousthat inside some brutal punishment is being meted out —there are short intervals, then unrelenting pursuit, then hammerlike blows—melodramatic thuds, terrible silences (I crouch and wonder what has happened), and the pursuit begins again. I see clasped hands and appealing eyes and feel very helpless and mystified outside. An epileptic vision or an opium dream—Dostoievskyor De Quincey set to music.
In the Second Movement the man is broken, an unrecognisable vomit. I see a pale youth sitting with arms hanging limply between the knees, hands folded, and with sad, impenetrable eyes that have gazed on unspeakable horrors. I see the brave, tearful smile, the changed life after personal catastrophe, the Cross held before closing eyes, sudden absences of mind, reveries, poignant retrospects, the rustle of a dead leaf of thought at the bottom of the heart, the tortuous pursuit of past incidents down into the silence of yesterday, the droning of comfortable words, the painful collection of the wreckage of a life with intent to "carry on" for a while in duty bound, for the widow consolation in the child; a greyhound's cold wet nose nozzling into a listless hand, and outside a Thrush singing after the storm, etc., etc.
In the Third Movement comes the crash by which I know something final and dreadful has happened. Then the resurrection with commotion in Heaven: tempests and human faces, scurryings to and fro, brazen portcullises clanging to, never to open more, the distant roll of drums and the sound of horses' hoofs. From behind the inmost veil of Heaven I faintly catch the huzzas of a great multitude. Then comes a great healing wind, then a few ghost-like tappings on the window pane till gradually the Avenue of Arches into Heaven come into view with a solemn cortege advancing slowly along.
Above the great groundswell of woe, Hope is restored and the Unknown Hero enters with all pomp into his Kingdom, etc., etc.
I am not surprised to learn that Beethoven was once on the verge of suicide.
April15.
There is an absurd fellow ... who insists on taking my pirouettes seriously. I say irresponsibly, "All men are liars," and he replies with jejuneness and exactitude of a pronouncing dictionary, "A liar is one who makes a false statement with intent to deceive." What can I do with him? "Did I ever meet a lady," he asked, "who wasn't afraid of mice?" "I don't know," I told him, "I never experiment with ladies in that way."
He hates me.
May11.
This mysterious world makes me chilly. It is chilly to be alive among ghosts in a nightmare of calamity. This Titanic war reduces me to the size and importance of a debilitated housefly. So what is a poor egotist to do? To be a common soldier is to become a pawn in the game between ambitious dynasts and their ambitious marshals. You lose all individuality, you become a "bayonet" or a "machine gun," or "cannon fodder," or "fighting material."
May22.
Generosity may be only weakness, philanthropy (beautiful word), self-advertisement, and praise of others sheer egotism. One can almost hear a eulogist winding himself up to strike his eulogy that comes out sententious, pompous, and full of self.
May23.
The following is a description of Lermontov by Maurice Baring:
"He had except for a few intimate friends an impossible temperament; he was proud, over-bearing, exasperated and exasperating, filled with a savageamour-propreand he took a childish delight in annoying; he cultivated 'le plaisir aristocratique de déplaire.' ... He could not bear not to make himself felt and if he felt he was unsuccessful in this by fair means he resorted to unpleasant ones.Yet he was warm-hearted, thirsting for love and kindness and capable of giving himself up to love if he chose.... At the bottom of all this lay no doubt a deep-seated disgust with himself and with the world in general, and a complete indifference to life resulting from large aspirations which could not find an outlet and recoiled upon himself."
This is an accurate description of Me.
May26.
The time will come—it's a great way off—when a joke about sex will be not so much objectionable as unintelligible. Thanks to Christian teaching, a nude body is now an obscenity, of the congress of the sexes it is indecent to speak and our birth is a corruption. Hence come a legion of evils: reticence, therefore ignorance and therefore venereal disease; prurience especially in adolescence, poisonous literature, and dirty jokes. The mind is contaminated from early youth; even the healthiest-minded girl will blush at the mention ofthe wonder of creation. Yet to the perfectly enfranchised mind it should be as impossible to joke about sex as about mind or digestion or physiology. The perfectly enfranchised poet—and Walt Whitman in "The Song of Myself" came near being it—should be as ready to sing of the incredible raptures of the sexual act between "twin souls" as of the clouds or sunshine. Every man or woman who has loved has a heart full of beautiful things to say but no man dare—for fear of the police, for fear of the coarse jests of others and even of a breakdown in his own highmindedness. I wonder just how much wonderful lyric poetry has thus been lost to the world!
May27.
The Pool: A Retrospect
From above, the pool looked like any little innocent sheet of water. But down in the hollow itself it grew sinister. The villagers used to say and to believe that ithad no bottom and certainly a very great depth in it could befeltif not accurately gauged as one stood at the water's edge. A long time ago, it was a great limestone quarry, but to-day the large mounds of rubble on one side of it are covered with grass and planted with mazzard trees, grown to quite a large girth. On the other side one is confronted by a tall sheet of black, carboniferous rock, rising sheer out of the inky water—a bare sombre surface on which no mosses even—"tender creatures of pity," Ruskin calls them—have taken compassion by softening the jagged edges of the strata or nestling in the scars. It is an excellent example of "Contortion" as Geologists say, for the beds are bent into a quite regular geometrical pattern —syncline and anticline in waves—by deep-seated plutonic force that makes the mind quake in the effort to imagine it.
On the top of this rock and overhanging the water—a gaunt, haggard-looking Fir tree impends, as it seems in a perilous balance, while down below, the pool, sleek and shiny, quietly waits with a catlike patience.
In summer time, successive rows of Foxgloves one behind the other in barbaric splendour are ranged around the grassy rubble slopes like spectators in an amphitheatre awaiting the spectacle. Fire-bellied Efts slip here and there lazily thro' the water. Occasionally a Grass-snake would swim across the pool and once I caught one and on opening his stomach found a large fire-bellied Eft inside. The sun beats fiercely into this deep hollow and makes the water tepid. On the surface grows a glairy Alga, which was once all green but now festers in yellow patches and causes a horrible stench. Everything is absolutely still, air and water are stagnant. A largeDytiscusbeetle rises to the surface to breathe and every now and then large bubbles of marsh gas come sailing majestically up from the depth and explode quietly into the fetid air. Thehorrificnessof this place impressed me even when I was intent only on fishing there for bugs and efts. Now, seen in retrospect, it haunts me.
May28.
It is only by accident that certain of our bodily functions are distasteful. Many birds eat the faeces of their young. The vomits of some Owls are formed into shapely pellets, often of beautiful appearance, when composed of the glittering multi-coloured elytra of Beetles, etc. The common Eland is known to micturate on the tuft of hair on the crown of its head, and it does this habitually, when lying down, by bending its head around and down—apparently because of the aroma, perhaps of sexual importance during mating time, as it is a habit of the male alone.
At lunch time, had an unpleasant intermittency period in my heart's action and this rather eclipsed my anxiety over a probable Zeppelin Raid. Went home to my rooms by 'bus, and before setting off to catch my train for West Wycombe to stay for the week-end at a Farm with E—— swallowed two teaspoonfuls of neat brandy, filled my flask, and took a taxi to Paddington. At 3.50 started to walk to C—— H—— Farm from W. Wycombe Station, where E—— has been lodging for some weeks taking a rest cure after a serious nervous breakdown thro' overwork. As soon as I stepped out of the train, I sniffed the fresh air and soon made off down the road, happy to have left London and the winter and the war far behind. The first man of whom I inquired the way happened to have been working at the Farm only a few weeks ago, so I relied implicitly on his directions, and as it was but a mile and a half decided that my wobbly heart could stand the strain. I set out with a good deal of pleasurable anticipation. I was genuinely looking forward to seeing E——, altho' in the past few weeks our relations had become a little strained, at least on my part, mainly because of her little scrappy notes to me scribbled in pencil, undated, and dull! Yet I could do with a volume of "Sonnets from the Portuguese." These letters chilled me. In reply, I wrote with cold steel short, lifeless formal notes, for I felt genuinely aggrieved that she should care so little how she wrote to me or how she expressed her love. Ibecame ironical with myself over the prospect of marrying a girl who appeared so little to appreciate my education and mental habits. [What a popinjay!—1917.] My petty spirit grew disenchanted, out of love. I was false to her in a hundred inconsiderable little ways and even deliberately planned the breaking off of the engagement some months hence when she should be restored to normal health.
But once in the country and, as I thought, nearing my love at every step and at every bend in the road, even anticipating her arms around me with real pleasure (for she promised to meet me half way), I on a sudden grew eager for her again and was assured of a happy week-end with her. Then the road grew puzzling and I became confused, uncertain of the way. I began to murmur she should have given me instructions. Every now and then I had to stop and rest as my heart was beating so furiously. Espying a farm on the left I made sure I had arrived at my destination and walked across a field to it and entered the yard where I heard some one milking a cow in a shed. I shouted over the five-barred gate into empty space, "Is this C—— H—— Farm?" A labourer came out of the shed and redirected me. It was now ten to five. I was tired and out of sorts, and carried a troublesome little handbag. I swore and cursed and found fault with E—— and the Universe.
I trudged on, asking people, as I went, the way, finally emerging from the cover of a beautiful wood thro' a wicket gate almost at the entrance to the Farm I sought. At the front door we embraced affectionately and we entered at once, I putting a quite good face upon my afternoon's exertions—when I consider my unbridled fury of a short time before. E——, as brown as a berry, conducted me to my bedroom and I nearly forgot to take this obvious opportunity of kissing her again.
"How are you?" I asked.
"All right," she said, fencing.
"But really?"
"All right."
(A little nettled): "My dear, that isn't going to satisfy me. You will have to tell me exactly how you are."
After tea, I recovered myself and we went for a walk together. The beauty of the country warmed me up, and in the wood we kissed—I for my part happy and quite content with the present state of our relations,i.e., affectionate but not perfervid.
May29.
Got up early and walked around the Farm before breakfast. Everything promises to be delightful—young calves, broods of ducklings, and turkeys, fowls, cats and dogs. In the yard are two large Cathedral barns, with enormous pent roofs sloping down to within about two feet of the ground and entered by way of great double doors that open with the slowness and solemnity of a Castle's portal studded with iron knobs. It thrilled me to the marrow on first putting my head outside to be greeted with the grunt of an invisible pig that I found scraping his back on the other side of the garden wall.
In the afternoon, E—— and I sat together in the Beech Wood: E—— on a deck chair and I on a rug on the ground. In spite of our beautiful surroundings we did not progress very well, but I attributed her slight aloofness to the state of her nerves. She is still far from recovered. These wonderful Beech Woods are quite new to me. The forest beech is a very different plant from the solitary tree. In the struggle to reach the light the Forest Beech grows lean and tall and gives an extraordinary suggestion of wiry powerful strength. On the margins of the wood, Bluebells were mobilised in serried ranks. Great Tits whistled—in the language of our allies—"Bijou, Bijou" and I agreed with every one of them.
Some folk don't like to walk over Bluebells or Buttercups or other flowers growing on the ground. But it is foolish to try to pamper Nature as if she were a sickly child. She is strong and can stand it. You can stamp on and crush a thousand flowers—they will all come up again next year.
By some labyrinthine way which I cannot now recall, the conversation worked round to a leading question by E.—if in times like these we ought not to cease being in love? She was quite calm and serious. I said "No, of course not, silly." My immediate apprehension was that she had perceived the coldness in my letters and I was quite satisfied that she was so well able to read the signs in the sky. "But you don't wish to go on?" she persisted. I persisted that I did, that I had no misgivings, no second thoughts, that I was not merely taking pity on her, etc. The wild temptation to seize this opportunity for a break I smothered in reflecting how ill she was and how necessary to wait first till she was well again. These thoughts passed swiftly, vaguely like wraiths thro' my mind: I was barely conscious of them. Then I recalled the sonnet about coming in the rearward of a conquered woe and mused thereon. But I took no action. [Fortunately—for me. 1916.]
Presently with cunning I said that there was no cloud on my horizon whatever—only her "letters disappointed me a little—they were so cold," but "as soon as I saw you again, darling, those feelings disappeared."
As soon as they were spoken I knew they were not as they might seem, the words of a liar and hypocrite. Theybecametrue. E—— looked very sweet and helpless and I loved her again as much as ever.
"It's funny," she said, "but I thought your letters were cold. Letters are so horrid."
The incident shews how impossible is intellectual honesty between lovers. Truth is at times a hound which must to kennel.
"Write as you would speak," said I. "You know I'm not one to carp about a spelling mistake!"
The latter remark astonished me. Was it indeed I who was speaking? All the week I had been fuming over this. Yet I was honest: the Sun and E.'s presence were dispelling my ill-humours and crochets. We sealed our conversation with a kiss and swore never to doubt each other again. E.'s spell was beginning to act. It is always the same. I cannotresist the actual presence of this woman. Out of her sight, I can in cold blood plan a brutal rupture. I can pay her a visit when the first kiss is a duty and the embrace a formality. But after 5 minutes I am as passionate and devoted as before. It is always thus. After leaving her, I am angry to think that once more I have succumbed.
In the evening we went out into a field and sat together in the grass. It is beautiful. We lay flat on our backs and gazed up at the sky.
S.H. has died of enteric at Malta. In writing to Mrs. H., instead of dwelling on what a splendid fellow he was I belaboured the fact that I still remembered our boyish friendship in every detail and still kept his photo on my mantelpiece and altho' "in later years" I didn't suppose we "had a great deal in common I discovered that a friendship even between two small boys cannot wholly disappear into the void." Discussing myself when I ought to have been praising him! Ugh! She will think what a conceited, puff-breasted Jackanapes. These phrases have rankled in my mind ever since I dropped the letter into the letter-box. "Your Stanley, Mrs. H., was of course a very inferior sort of person and naturally, you could hardly expect me to remain friendly with him but rest assured I hadn't forgotten him," etc.
The Luxury of Lunacy
Yesterday, I read a paper at the Zoological Society about lice. There was a goodly baldness of sconce and some considerable length of beard present that listened or appeared to listen to my innocent remarks with great solemnity and sapience.... I badly wanted to tell them some horrid stories about human lice but I had not the courage. I wanted to jolt these middle-aged gentlemen by performing a few tricks but I am too timid for such adventures. But before going to sleep I imagined a pandemonium in which with a perfectly glacial manner Iproduced lice alive from my pockets, conjured them down from the roof in a rain, with the skilful sleight of hand drew them out of the chairman's beard, made the ladies scream as I approached, dared to say they were all lousy and unclean and finished up with an eloquent apostrophe after the manner of Thomas de Quincey (and of Sir Walter Raleigh before him) beginning:
"O just, subtle and eloquent avenger, pierce the hides of these abominable old fogies, speckle their polished calvaria with the scarlet blood drops...."
But I hadn't the courage. Shelley in a crowded omnibus suddenly burst out: "O let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of Kings, etc." I've always wanted to do something like that and when I have £5 to spare I hope to pull the communication cord of an express train—my hands tingle as often as I look at it. Dr. Johnson's courage in tapping the lamp-posts is really everyone's envy tho' we laugh at him for it and say, green-eyed, that he was mad. In walking along the pavement, I sometimes indulge myself in the unutterable, deeply rooted satisfaction of stepping on a separate flagstone where this is possible with every stride. And if this is impossible or not easy, there arises in me a vague mental uneasiness, some subconscious suspicion that the world is not properly geometrical and that the whole universe perhaps is working out of truth. I am also rather proud of my courageous self-surrender to the daemon of laughter, especially in those early days when H. and I used to sit opposite one another and howl like hyenas. After the most cacophonous cachinnations as soon as we had recovered ourselves he or I would regularly remark in serious and confidential tones, "I say—wereallyare going mad." But what a delightful luxury to be thus mad amid the great, spacious, architectural solemnity with gargoyles and effigies of a scientific meeting! Some people never do more than chuckle or smile—and they are often very humorous happy people, ignorant nevertheless of the joy of riding themselves on the snaffle and losing all control.
While boating on —— last summer, we saw two persons,a man and a girl sitting together on the beach reading a book with heads almost touching.
"I wonder what they're reading?" I said, and I was dying to know. We made a few facetious guesses.
"Shall I ask?"
"Yes, do," said Mrs. ——.
The truth is we all wanted to know. We were suddenly mad with curiosity as we watched the happy pair turning over leaf after leaf.
While R—— leaned on his oars, I stood up in the boat and threatened to shout out a polite enquiry—just to prove that the will is free. But seeing my intention the boat-load grew nervous and said seriously, "No," which unnerved me at the last moment so I sat down again. Why was I so afraid of being thought a lunatic by two persons in the distance whom I had never seen and probably would never see again? Besides Iwasa lunatic—we all were.
In our post-prandial perambulations about S. Kensington G—— and I often pass the window of a photographer's shop containing always a profusion of bare arms, chests, necks, bosoms belonging to actresses, aristocrats and harlots—some very beautiful indeed. Yet on the whole the window annoys us, especially one picture of a young thing with an arum lily (ghastly plant!) laid exquisitely across her breast.
"Why do we suffer this?" I asked G——, tapping the window ledge as we stood.
"I don't know," he answered lamely—morose. (Pause while the two embittered young men continue to look in and the beautiful young women continue to look out.)
Thoroughly disgruntled I said at last: "If only we had the courage of our innate madness, the courage of children, lunatics and men of genius, we should get some stamp paper, and stick a square beneath each photograph with our comments."
Baudelaire describes how he dismissed a glass vendor because he had no coloured glasses—"glasses of rose and crimson, magical glasses, glasses of Paradise"—and, stepping out on to his balcony, threw a flowerpot down on thetray of glasses as soon as the man issued into the street below, shouting down furiously, "The Life Beautiful! The Life Beautiful."
Bergson's theory is that laughter is a "social gesture" so that when a man in a top hat treads on a banana skin and slips down we laugh at him for his lack "of living pliableness." At this rate we ought to be profoundly solemn at Baudelaire's action and moreover a "social gesture" is more likely to be an expression of society's will to conformity in all its members rather than any dangerous "living pliableness." Society hates living pliableness and prefers drill, routine, orthodoxy, conformity. It hated the living pliableness of Turner, of Keats, of Samuel Butler and a hundred others.
But to return to lunacy: the truth is we are all mad fundamentally and are merely schooled into sanity by education. Pascal wrote: "Men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness." And, in fact, the man who has succeeded in extirpating this intoxication of life is usually said to be "temporarily insane." In those melancholy interludes of sanity when the mind becomes rationalised we all know how much we have been deceived and gulled, what an extraordinary spectacle humanity presents rushing on in noise and tumult no one knows why or whither. Look at that tailor in his shop—why does he do it? Some day in the future he thinks he will.... But the day never comes and he is nevertheless content.