[1]The English Dialect Dictionary derives the word from Old Frenchchiboule, and gives a reference to Piers Plowman. Why hasn't such an old and useful word become a part of the English language like others also brought over at the time of the Norman Conquest?
[1]The English Dialect Dictionary derives the word from Old Frenchchiboule, and gives a reference to Piers Plowman. Why hasn't such an old and useful word become a part of the English language like others also brought over at the time of the Norman Conquest?
February1.
Since I last wrote—a month ago—I have recovered my buoyancy after a blow which kept me under water so long I thought I should never come up and be happy again.... I was reciting my woes to R——, and gaining much relief thereby, when we espied another crony on the other side of the street, crossed over at once, bandied words with him and then walked on, picking up the thread of my lugubrious story just where I had left off—secretly staggered at my emotional agility. I've got to this now,—I simply don't care.
February2.
"And she draiglet all her petticoatie, Coming thro' the rye." These words have a ridiculous fascination for me; I cannot resist their saccharine, affectionate, nay amorous jingle and keep repeating them aloud all over the house—as Lamb once kept reciting "Rose Aylmer."
February16.
We took possession of our country cottage to-day: very charming and overlooking a beautiful Park.
Have just discovered the Journal of the De Goncourts and been reading it greedily. Life has really been acommodity. I am boiling over with vitality, chattering amiably to everyone about nothing—argumentative, sanguine, serious, ridiculous. I called old R—— a Rapscallion, a Curmudgeon, and a Scaramouche, and E—— a trull, a drab, a trollop, a callet. "You certainly are a unique husband," said that sweet little lady, and I....
With me, one of the symptoms of delirium is always a melodramatic truculence! I shake my fist in R——'s face and make him explode with laughing.... The sun to-day, and the great, whopping white clouds all bellied out, made me feel inside quite a bright young dog wriggling its body in ecstatic delight let loose upon the green sward.
"You must come down for a week end," I said to R—— at lunch. "Come down as soon as you can. You will find every comfort. It is an enormous house—I have not succeeded in finding my way about it and—it's dangerous to lose yourself—makes you late for dinner. When you arrive our gilded janitor will say: 'I believe Mr. Barbellion is in the library.'"
"Black eunuchs wait on you at dinner, I suppose," R—— rejoined.
"Oh! yes and golden chandeliers and a marble stair-case—all in barbaric splendour."
"Yes, I shall certainly be glad to come down," said R——, phlegmatically.
And so on and so on. Words, idle words all day in a continuous rush. And I am sure that the match which fired the gun-powder was the discovery of the De Goncourts' Journal! It's extraordinary how I have been going on from week to week quite calmly for all the world as if I had read all the books and seen all the places and done everything according to the heart's desire. This book has really jolted me out of my complacency: to think that all this time, I have been dead to so much! Why I might have died unconscious that the De Goncourts had ever lived and written their colossal book and now I am aware of it, I am all in a fever to read it and take it up into my brain: I might die now before Ihave finished it—a thought that makes me wild with desire just as I once endured most awful pangs when I felt my health going, and believed that I might die before having ever been in love—to die and never to have been in love! —for an instant at a time this possibility used to make me writhe.
March22.
R—— has an unpleasant habit of making some scarifying announcement drawing forth an explosive query from me and then lapsing at once into an eleusinian silence: he appears to take a sensuous pleasure in the pause that keeps you expectant. I could forgive a man who keeps you on tenterhooks for two puffs in order to keep his pipe alight, but R—— shuts up out of sheer self-indulgence and goes on gazing at the horizon with the eyes of a seer (he thinks) trying to cod me he sees a portent there only revealed to God's elect.
I told him this in the middle of one of his luxurious silences. "I will tell you," he said deliberately, "when we reach the Oratory." (We were in Brompton Road.)
"Which side of it?" I enquired anxiously. "This or that?"
"That," said he, "will depend on how you behave in the meantime."
April3.
We met a remarkable Bulldog to-day in the street, humbly following behind a tiny boy to whom it was attached by a piece of string. At the time we were following in the wake of three magnificent Serbian Officers, and I was particularly interesting myself in the curious cut of their top boots. But the Bulldog was the Red Herring in our path.
"Is that a Dog?" I asked the little boy.
He assured me that it was, and so it turned out to be, tho' Bull-frog would have been a better name for it, the forelegs being more bandied, the back broader and themouth wider than in any Bulldog I have ever seen. It was a super-Bulldog.
We turned and walked on. "There," said R——, "now we have lost our Serbian Officers."
April4.
"May I use your microscope?" he asked.
"By all means," I said with a gesture of elaborate politeness.
He sat down at my table, in my chair, and used my instrument—becoming at once absorbed and oblivious to my banter as per below:
"As Scotchmen," I said, "are monuments rather than men, this latest raid on Edinboro's worthy inhabitants must be called vandalism rather than murder."
No answer. I continued to stand by my chair.
"How pleased Swift, Johnson, Lamb, and other anti-Caledonians would be...."
"Hope you don't mind my occupying your chair a little longer," the Scotchman said, "but this is a larva, has curious maxillæ...." and his voice faded away in abstraction.
"Oh! no—go on," I said, "I fear it is a grievous absence of hospitality on my part in not providing you with a glass of whiskey. Can I offer you water, Sir?"
No answer.
Another enthusiast ushered himself in, was greeted with delight by the first and invited to sit down. I pulled out a chair for him and said:
"Shave, sir, or hair cut?"
"If you follow along to the top of the galea," No. I droned on imperturbably, "you will...." etc.
I got tired of standing and talking to an empty house but at last they got up, apologising and making for the door.
I entreated them not to mention the matter—my fee should be nominal—I did it out of sheer love, etc.
They thanked me again and would have said more but I added blandly:
"You know your way out?" They assured me they did (having worked in the place for 30 years and more)—I thanked God—and sat down to my table once more.
(These reports of conversations are rather fatuous: yet they give an idea of the sort of person I have to deal with, and also the sort of person I am among this sort of person.)
April6.
The Housefly Problem—1916
For weeks past we have all been in a terrible flutter scarcely paralleled by the outbreak of Armageddon in August, 1914. The spark which fired almost the whole building was a letter to theTimeswritten by Dr. ——, making public an ignominious confession of ignorance on the part of Entomologists as to how the Housefly passed the winter. In reply, many correspondents wrote to say they hibernated, and one man was even so temerarious as to quote to us Entomologists the exact Latin name of the Housefly: viz.,Musca domestica. We asked for specimens and enormous numbers of flies at once began to arrive at the Museum, alive and dead—and not a Housefly among them! So there was a terrible howdedo.
One of the correspondents was named "Masefield." "Not Masefield the poet?" an excited dipterist asked. I reassured him.
"I've a good mind," said Dr. ——, "to reply to this chap who's so emphatic and give him a whigging—only he's climbing down a bit in this second letter in to-day's issue." I strongly advocated clemency.
But still the affair goes on. Every morning sees more letters and more flies sent by all sorts of persons—we seem to have set the whole world searching for Houseflies—Duchesses, signalmen, farmers, footmen. Every morning each fresh batch of flies is mounted on pins by experts in the Setting Room, and an Assistant's whole time is devoted to identifying, arranging, listing and reporting upon the new arrivals. At the last meeting of the Trustees a sample collection was displayed to show indubitably that theinsects which hibernate in houses are notMusca domesticabutPollenia rudis. I understand the Trustees were appreciative.
An observant eye can now discover state visits to our dipterists from interested persons carrying their flies with them, animated discussions in the corridor, knots of excited enthusiasts in the Lavatory, in the Library, everywhere—and everywhere the subject discussed is the same: How does the Housefly pass the winter? As one passes one catches: "In Bakehouses certainly they are to be found but...." or a wistful voice, "I wish I had caught that one in my bathroom three winters ago—I am certain it was a Housefly." The Doctor himself—a gallant Captain—wanders from room to room stimulating his lieutenants to make suggestions, and examining every answer to the great interrogative on its merits, no matter how humble or insignificant the person who makes it. Then of an afternoon he will entirely disappear, and word goes round that he has set forth to examine a rubbish heap in Soho or Pimlico. As the afternoon draws to its close someone enquires if he has come back yet; next morning a second asks if I had seen him, then a third announces mournfully that he has just been holding conversation with him, but that nothing at all was found in the rubbish heap.
The great sensation of all occurred last week when somebody ran along the corridor crying that Mr. —— had just found a Housefly in his room. We were all soon agog with the news, and the excited Captain was presently espied setting out for the scene of operations with a killing bottle and net. The insect was promptly impounded and identified as a veritableMusca domestica. A consultation being held to sit on the body, a lady finally laid information that two "forced Houseflies" hatched the day before had escaped from her possession. She suggested Mr. ——'s specimen was one of them.
"How would it get from your room to Mr. ——'s?" she
was immediately asked. And breathless, we all heard her answer deliberately and quite audibly that the fugitive may have gone out of her window, up the garden and inby Mr. ——'s window,orit may have gone out of her door, up the corridor and in by his door. I wanted to know why it should have entered Mr. ——'s room as he is not a dipterist but a microlepidopterist. They looked at me sternly and we slowly dispersed.
This morning, the Dr. came to me with a newspaper cutting in his hand, saying, "The Timesis behindhand." He handed me the slip. It was a clipping from to-day'sTimesabout a sackful of flies which had been taken from Wandsworth Clock Tower in a state of hibernation.
"Behindhand?" I asked timidly, for I felt that all the story was not in front of me.
"Why, yes. Don't you know?"
I knew nothing, but was prepared for anything.
"The Star, two days ago," he informed me, "had a paragraph about this—headed 'Tempus fugit' "—this last in a resentful tone as tho' the frivolous reporter were attempting to discredit our mystery.
There was a long pause. Neither of us spoke. Then he slowly said:
"I wonder whyThe Timesis so behindhand. This is two days late."
May5.
Hulloa, old friend: how are you? I mean my Diary. I haven't written to you for ever so long, and my silence as usual indicates happiness. I have been passing thro' an unbroken succession of calm happy days, walking in the woods with my darling, or doing a little gentle gardening on coming home in the evening—and the War has been centuries away. Later on towards bedtime, E—— reads Richard Jefferies, I play Patience and Mrs. —— makes garments for Priscilla.
The only troubles have been a chimney which smokes and a neighbour's dog which barks at night. So to be sure, I have made port after storm at last—and none too soon. To-day my cheerfulness has been rising in a crescendo till to-night it broke in such a handsome crest of pure delight that I cannot think of going to bed without recording it.
Pachmann
After sitting on the wall around the fountain in the middle of Trafalgar Square, eating my sandwiches and feeding the Pigeons with the crumbs, I listened for a moment to the roar of the traffic around three sides of the Square as I stood in the centre quite alone, what time one fat old pigeon, all unconcerned, was treading another. It was an extraordinary experience: motor horns tooted incessantly and it seemed purposelessly, so that one had the fancy that all London was out for a joy-ride—it was a great British Victory perhaps, or Peace Day.
Then walked down Whitehall to Westminster Bridge in time to see the 2 o'clock boat start upstream for Kew. I loitered by the old fellow with the telescope who keeps his pitch by Boadicea: I saw a piper of the Scots Guards standing near gazing across the river but at nothing in particular—just idling as I was. I saw another man sitting on the stone steps and reading a dirty fragment of newspaper. I saw the genial, red-faced sea-faring man in charge of the landing stage strolling up and down his small domain,—chatting, jesting, spitting, and making fast a rope or so. Everything wasaliveto the finger tips, vividly shining, pulsating.
Arrived at Queen's Hall in time for Pachmann's Recital at 3.15.... As usual he kept us waiting for 10 minutes. Then a short, fat, middle-aged man strolled casually on to the platform and everyone clapped violently—so it was Pachmann: a dirty greasy looking fellow with long hair of dirty grey colour, reaching down to his shoulders and an ugly face. He beamed on us and then shrugged his shoulders and went on shrugging them until his eye caught the music stool, which seemed to fill him with amazement. He stalked it carefully, held out one hand to it caressingly, and finding all was well, went two steps backwards, clasping his hands before him and always gazing at the little stool in mute admiration, his eyes sparkling with pleasure, like Mr. Pickwick's on the discovery of the archeological treasure. He approached once more, bent down and ever sogently moved it about 7/8ths of an inch nearer the piano. He then gave it a final pat with his right hand and sat down.
He played Nocturne No. 2, Prelude No. 20, a Mazurka and two Etudes of Chopin and Schubert's Impromptu No. 4.
At the close we all crowded around the platform and gave the queer, old-world gentleman an ovation, one man thrusting up his hand which Pachmann generously shook as desired.
As an encore he gave us a Valse—"Valse, Valse," he exclaimed ecstatically, jumping up and down in his seat in time to the music. It was a truly remarkable sight: on his right the clamorous crowd around the platform; on his left the seat holders of the Orchestra Stalls, while at the piano bobbed this grubby little fat man playing divine Chopin divinely well, at the same time rising and falling in his seat, turning a beaming countenance first to the right and then to the left, crying, "Valse, Valse." He is as entertaining as a tumbler at a variety hall.
As soon as he had finished, we clapped and rattled for more, Pachmann meanwhile standing surrounded by his idolaters in affected despair at ever being able to satisfy us. Presently he walked off and a scuffle was half visible behind the scenes between him and his agent who sent him in once more.
The applause was wonderful. As soon as he began again it ceased on the instant, and as soon as he left off it started again immediately—nothing boisterous or rapturous but a steady, determined thunder of applause that came regularly and evenly like the roar from some machine.
May20.
Spent a quiet day. Sat at my escritoire in the Studio this morning writing an Essay, with a large 4-fold window on my left, looking on to woods and fields, with Linnets, Greenfinches, Cuckoos calling. This afternoon while E—— rested awhile I sat on the veranda in the sun and readAntony and Cleopatra.... Yes, I'm in harbour at last. I'd be the last to deny it but I cannot believe it will last.It's too good to last and it's all too good to be even true. E—— is too good to be true, the home is too good to be true, and this quiet restful existence is too wonderful to last in the middle of a great war. It's just a little deceitful April sunshine, that's all....[1]
Had tea at the ——. A brilliant summer's evening. Afterwards, we wandered into the garden and shrubbery and sat about on the turf of the lawn, chatting and smoking. Mr. —— played with a rogue of a white Tomcat called Chatham, and E—— talked about our neighbour, "Shamble legs," about garden topics, etc. Then I strolled into the drawing-room where Cynthia was playing Chopin on a grand piano. Is it not all perfectly lovely?
How delicious to be silent, lolling on the Chesterfield, gazing abstractedly thro' the lattice window and listening to the lulling charities of Nocturne No. 2, Op. 37! The melody in the latter part of this nocturne took me back at once to a cloudless day in an open boat in the Bay of Combemartin, with oars up and the water quietly and regularly lapping the gunwales as we rose and fell. A state of the most profound calm and happiness took possession of me.
June2.
From the local paper:
"A comrade in the Gloucesters writing to a friend at —— mentions that Pte. J—— has been fatally shot in action. J—— was well known here for years as an especially smart young newsvendor."
June3.
What a bitter disappointment it is to realise that people the most intimately in love with one another are really separated by such a distance. A woman is calmly knitting socks or playing Patience while her husband or sweetheart lies dead in Flanders. However strong the tie that binds them together yet they are insufficientlyen rapportfor herto sense even a catastrophe—and she must wait till the War Office forsooth sends her word. How humiliating that the War Office must do what Love cannot. Human love seems then such a superficial thing. Every person is a distinct egocentric being. Each for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. "Ah! but she didn't know." "Yes, but sheoughtto have known." Mental telepathy and clairvoyance should be common at least to all lovers.
This morning in bed I heard a man with a milkcart say in the road to a villager at about 6.30 a.m., "... battle ... and we lost six cruisers." This was the first I knew of the Battle of Jutland. At 8 a.m. I read in theDaily Newsthat the British Navy had been defeated, and thought it was the end of all things. The news took away our appetites. At the railway station, theMorning Postwas more cheerful, even reassuring, and now at 6.30 p.m. the Battle has turned into a merely regrettable indecisive action. We breathe once more.
June4.
It has now become a victory.
June11.
Old systems of Classification: Rafinesc's Theory of Fives, Swainson's Theory of Sevens, Edward Newman's book calledSphinx Vespiformistracing fives throughout the animal world, Sir Thomas Browne's Quincunx, chasing fives throughout the whole of nature—in the words of Coleridge, "quincunxes in Heaven above, quincunxes in the Earth below, quincunxes in the mind of man, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in everything!"
Old false trails:
The Philosopher's Stone (Balthazar Clæs).[2]
A universal catholicon (Bishop Berkeley's tar-water). Mystical numbers (as per above).
My father was Sir Thomas Browne and my mother Marie Bashkirtseff. See what a curious hybrid I am!
I toss these pages in the faces of timid, furtive, respectable people and say: "There! that's me! You may like it or lump it, but it's true. And I challenge you to follow suit, to flash the searchlight of your self-consciousness into every remotest corner of your life and invite everybody's inspection. Be candid, be honest, break down the partitions of your cubicle, come out of your burrow, little worm." As we are all such worms we should at least be honest worms.
My gratitude to E—— for plucking me out of the hideous miseries of my life in London is greater than I can express. If I were the cheap hero of a ladies' novel I should immolate my journals as a token, and you would have a pretty picture of a pale young man watching his days go up in smoke by the drawing-room fire. But I have more confidence in her sterling good sense, and if I cannot be loved for what I am, I do not wish to be loved for what I am not.
Since the fateful Nov. 27th, my life has become entirely posthumous. I live now in the grave and am busy furnishing it with posthumous joys. I accept my fate with great content, my one-time restless ambition lies asleep now, my one-time, furious self-assertiveness is anæsthetised by this great War; the War and the discovery about my health together have plucked out of me that canker of self-obsession. I sit at home here in this country cottage in perfect isolation—flattened out by a steam hammer (tho' it took Armageddon to do it!), yet as cheerful and busy as aDormouse laying up store for the winter. For I am almost resigned to the issue in the knowledge that some day, someone will know, perhaps somebody will understand and—immortal powers!—even sympathise, "the quick heart quickening from the heart that's still."
July19.
Omniscience
An omniscient Caledonian asked me to-day:
"Where are the Celebes? Are they E. or N.E. of the Sandwich Group?"
I marked him down at once as my legitimate prey. Sitting back in my chair, I replied slowly in my most offensive manner:
"The Island of Celebes is of enormous size and curious shape situated in the Malay Archipelago."
The Caledonian made no sign. Instead of grinning at his error and confessing to a "floater," he endeavoured to carry on by remarking, "That of course would be N. of Papua," just for all the world as if his error was a minor one of latitude and longitude.
Ignoring his comment, I continued:
"From the Zoogeographical point of view, Celebes is unequalled in importance, having the strangest fauna almost of any island on the face of the globe. Then there's 'Wallace's Line,'" I said, being purposely obscure.
The Caledonian said nought but "looked hurt." It was so obvious that he didn't know, and it was so obvious that I knew that he didn't know, that after my farcical truculence I expected the tension to dissolve in laughter. Yet it is hard for a Caledonian to say "God be merciful to me, ignorant devil that I am." So I pursued him with more information about "Wallace's Line," with an insouciant air, as much as to say, "Wallace's Line of course you heard discussed before you were breached."
"Some do say, you know, that the Line is 'all my eye and Betty Martin,'e.g., R——."
This gave him his first opportunity of finding his feet inthis perilously deep water. So he said promptly, eager to seem knowledgeable with an intelligent rejoinder:
"As! yes, R—— is an authority on Fishes."
I assented. "At the last meeting of the British Ass. he tore the idea to shreds."
The drowning Caledonian seized at any straw:
"Fishes, however, are not of paramount importance in cases of geographical distribution, are they?"
I knew he was thinking ofmarinefishes, but I did not illumine him, and merely said:
"Oh! yes, of very great importance," at which he looked still more "hurt," decamped in silence and left me conqueror of the field but without the spoils of victory: it was impossible to bring him to say "I do not know"—four mono-syllables was all I wanted from the man who for months past has been lecturing me on all things from Music and the Drama to Philosophy, Painting and—Insects.
July20.
The cradle came a few days ago but I had not seen it until this morning when I unlocked the cupboard door, looked in and shuddered.
"That's the skeleton in our cupboard," I said on coming down to breakfast. She laughed, but I really meant it.
E—— keeps a blue bowl replenished with flaming Poppies in our room. The cottage is plagued with Ear-wigs which fly in at night and get among the clothes and bedlinen. This morning, dressing, she held up her chemise to the light saying: "I always do this—you can see their little heathen bodies then against the light...." Isn't she charming?
July30.
The other day R—— and I were sitting on a stile on the uplands in perfect summer weather and talking of happy days before the War—he was in khaki and I was resting my "gammy" leg.... As we talked, we let our eyes roam, resting luxuriously wherever we pleased and occasionally interrupting the conversation with "Look at thatcow scratching herself against the Oak," or "Do you see the oats waving?" In the distance we saw a man and a boy walking up towards us along the path thro' the corn, but the eye having momentarily scrutinised them wandered away and the conversation never paused. When next I looked, they were much nearer—crossing the furrows in the potato field in fact, and we both stopped talking to watch—idly. The boy seemed to be about 10 years old, and it amused us to see his great difficulty in stepping across the furrows.
"Poor little chap," R—— said, and we laughed.
Then the boy stumbled badly and all at once the man lifted his walking-stick and beat him, saying ill-naturedly, "Step between the furrows," and again, "Step between the furrows." Our enchanting little picture was transfigured in an instant. The "charming little boy" was a natural idiot—a gross, hefty creature perhaps 30 years of age, very short and very thick, dressed in a little sailor suit. I said, "Heavens," and R—— looked positively scared. We stood aside for them to get over the stile, the "boy" still suffering from his over exertion, breathing stertorously like a horse pulling uphill and still evidently fearful of the big stick behind. He scrambled over the stile as best he could, rolling a wild eye at us as he did so—a large, bulgy eye with the lower lid swollen and sore, like the eye of a terrified ox on the way to the slaughter house. So much then for our little picture of charming childhood! The man followed close at his heels and looked at me with stern defiant eyes. "Yes, that is my son," his eyes declaimed, "and I'll thank you to avert your gaze or by the Lord I'll beat you too."
A Yellow Cat
Last week, I saw a yellow cat perched up quite high on a window ledge at the S—— Underground Station in celestial detachment from the crowd of serious, black-coated gentlemen hustling along to and from the trains. He had his back turned to us, but as I swept past in thestream, I was forced to look back a moment, and caught the outline of his whiskers—it made me smile intensely to myself and secretly I gave the palm to the cat for wisdom.
July31.
This War is so great and terrible that hyperbole is impossible. And yet my gorge rises at those fatuous journalists continually prating about this "Greatest War of all time," this "Great Drama," this "world catastrophe unparalleled in human history," because it is easy to see that they are really more thrilled than shocked by the immensity of the War. They indulge in a vulgar Yankee admiration for the Big Thing. Why call this shameful Filth by high sounding phrases—as if it were a tragedy from Euripides? We ought to hush it up, not brag about it, to mention it with a blush instead of spurting it out brazen-faced.
Mr. Garvin, for example, positively gloats over the War each week in theObserver: "Last week was one of those pivotal occasions on which destiny seems to swing"—and so on every week, you can hear him, historical glutton smacking his lips with an offensive relish.
For my part, I never seem to be in the same mind about the War twice following. Sometimes I am wonderstruck and make out a list of all the amazing events I have lived to see since August, 1914, and sometimes and more often I am swollen with contempt for its colossal imbecility. And sometimes I am swept away with admiration for all the heroism of the War, or by some particularly noble self-sacrifice, and think it is really all worth while. Then—and more frequently—I remember that this War has let loose on the world not only barbarities, butcheries and crimes, but lies, lies, lies—hypocrisies, deceits, ignoble desires for self-aggrandizement, self-preservation such as no one before ever dreamed existed in embryo in the heart of human beings.
The War rings the changes on all the emotions. It twangs all my strings in turn and occasionally all at once,so that I scarcely know how to react or what to think. You see, here am I, a compulsory spectator, and all I can do is to reflect. A Zeppelin brought down in flames that lit up all London—now that makes me want to write like Mr. Garvin. But a Foreign Correspondent's eager discussion of "Italy's aspirations in the Trentino," how Russia insists on a large slice of Turkey, and so forth, makes me splutter. How insufferably childish to be slicing up the earth's surface! How immeasureably "above the battle" I am at times. What a prig you will say I am when I sneer at such contemptible little devilries as the Bodies' trick of sending over a little note, "Warsaw is fallen," into our trenches, or as ours in reply: "Gorizia!"
"There is no difference in principle between the case of a man who loses a limb in the service of his country and that of the man who loses his reason, both have an obvious claim to the grateful recognition of the State."—A morning paper.
A jejune comment like this makes me grin like a gargoyle! Hark to the fellow—this leader-writer over his cup of tea. But it is a lesson to show how easily and quickly we have all adapted ourselves to the War. The War is everything; it is noble, filthy, great, petty, degrading, inspiring, ridiculous, glorious, mad, bad, hopeless yet full of hope. I don't know what to think about it.
August13.
I hate elderly women who mention their legs. It makes me shudder.
I had two amusing conversations this morning, one with a jealous old man of 70 summers who, in spite of his age, is jealous—I can find no other term—of me in spite of mine, and the other with a social climber. I always tell the first of any of my little successes and regularly hand him all my memoirs as they appear, to which he as regularly protests that he reads very little now.
"Oh! never mind," I always answer gaily, "you take it and read it going down in the train—it will amuse you." He submits but is always silent next time I see him—a little, admonitory silence. Or, I mention I am giving an address at ——, and he says "Oom," and at once begins his reminiscences, which I have heard many times before, and am sometimes tempted to correct him when, his memory failing, he leaves out an essential portion of his story. Thus do crabbed age and boastful youth tantalise one another.
To the social climber I said slyly:
"You seem to move in a very distinguished entourage during your week ends."
He smiled a little self-consciously, hesitated a moment and then said:
"Oh! I have a few nice friends, you know."
Now I am sorry, but though I scrutinised this lick-spittle and arch belly-truck rider very closely, I am quite unable to say whether that smile and unwonted diffidence meant simple pleasure at the now certain knowledge that I was duly impressed, or whether it was genuine confusion at the thought that he had perhaps been overdoing it.
Curiously enough, all bores of whatever kind make a dead set at me. I am always a ready listener and my thrusts are always gentle. Hence the pyramids! I constantly act as phlebotomist to the vanity of the young and to the anecdotage of the senile and senescent.
August13.
... I stood by his chair and looked down at him, and surveyed carefully the top of his head, neck, and collar, and with admirable restraint and calm, considered my most reasonable contempt of him. In perfect silence, we remained thus, while I looked down at a sore spot in the centre of his calvarium which he scratches occasionally, and toyed with the fine flower of my scorn.... But it is a dangerous license to take. One never knows....
Equilibrium Restored
To clear away the cobwebs and to purge my soul of evil thoughts and bitter feelings, went for a walk this evening over the uplands. Among the stubble, I sat down for a while with my back against the corn pook and listened to the Partridges calling. Then wandered around the edge of this upland field with the wind in my face and a shower of delicious, fresh rain pattering down on the leaves and dry earth. Then into a wood among tall forest Beeches and a few giant Larches where I rested again and heard a Woodpecker tapping out its message aloft.
This ramble in beautiful B——shire country restored my mental and spiritual poise. I came home serene and perfectly balanced—my equilibrium was something like the just perceptible oscillation of tall Larch-tree tops on the heights of a cliff and the sea below with a just perceptible swell on a calm and perfect June day. I felt exquisite —superb. I could have walked all the way home on a tight rope.
September2.
Just recently, I have been going fairly strong. I get frequent colds and sometimes show unpleasant nerve symptoms, but I take a course of arsenic and strychnine every month or so in tabloid form, and this helps me over bad patches.
Under the beatific influence of more comfortable health, the rare flower of my ambition has raised its head once more: my brain has bubbled with projects. To wit:
(1) An investigation of the Balancers in Larval Urodeles.
(2) The Present Parlous State of Systematic Zoology (for "Science Progress").
(3) The Anatomy of the Psocidæ.
Etc.
The strength of my ambition at any given moment is the measure of my state of health. It must really be an extraordinarily tenacious thing to have hung on thro' all myrecent experiences. Considerately enough this great Crab lets go of my big toe when I am sunk low in health, yet pinches devilishly hard as now when I am well.[3]
A Bad Listener
When I begin to speak, T—— will sometimes interrupt with his loud, rasping voice. I usually submit to this from sheer lack of lung power or I may have a sore throat. But occasionally after the fifth or sixth interruption I lose my equanimity and refuse to give him ground. I keep straight on with what I intended to say, only in a louder voice; he assumes a voice louder still, but not to be denied, I pile Pelion on Ossa and finally overwhelm him in a thunder of sound. For example:
"The other day"—I begin quietly collecting my thoughts to tell the story in detail, "I went to the——"
"Ah! you must come and see my pictures——" he breaks in; but I go on and he goes on and as I talk, I catch phrases: "St. Peters" or"Michael Angelo" or "Botticelli" in wondrous antiphon with my own "British Museum" and "I saw there," "two Syracusan," "tetradrachms," until very likely I reach the end of my sentence before he does his, or perhaps his rasp drives my remarks out of my head. But that makes no difference, for rather than give in I go on improvising in a louder and louder voice when suddenly, at length made aware of the fact that I am talking too, he stops! leaving me bellowing nonsense at the top of my voice, thus: "and I much admired these Syracusan tetradrachms, very charming indeed, I like them, the Syracusan tetradrachms I mean you know, and it will be good to go again and see them (louder) if possible and the weather keeps dry (louder) and the moon and the stars keep in their courses, if the slugs on the thorn (loudest)——" he stops, hears the last few words of my remarks, pretends to be appreciative but wonders what in Heaven's name I can have been talking about.
September3.
This is the sort of remark I like to make: Someone says to me: "Youarea pessimist."
"Ah! well," I say, looking infernally deep, "pessimism is a good policy; it's like having your cake and eating it at the same time."
Chorus: "Why?"
"Because if the future turns out badly you can say, 'I told you so,' to your own satisfaction, and if all is well, why you share everyone else's satisfaction."
Or I say: "No, I can't swim; and I don't want to!"
Chorus: "Why?"
"Because it is so dangerous."
Chorus: "Why?"
The Infernally Wise Youth: "For several reasons. If you are a swimmer you are likely to be oftener near water and oftener in danger than a non-swimmer. Further, as soon as you can swim even only a little, then as an honourable man, it behoves you to plunge in at once to save a drowning person, whereas, if you couldn't swim it would be merely tempting Providence."
Isn't it sickening?
A Jolt
Yesterday the wind was taken out of my sails. Racing along with spinnaker and jib, feeling pretty fit and quite excited over some interesting ectoparasites just collected on some Tinamous, I suddenly shot into a menacing dead calm: that stiflingly still atmosphere which precedes a Typhoon. That is to say, my eye caught the title of an enormous quarto memoir in theTrans. Roy. Soc., Edinburgh: The Histology of —— ——.
I was browsing in the library at the time when this hit me like a carelessly handled gaff straight in the face. I almost ran away to my room.
My Pink Form just received amazes me! To be a soldier? C'est incroyable, ma foi! The possibility evenis distracting! To send me a notice requesting me to prepare myself for killing men! Why I should feel no more astonished to receive a War Office injunction under dire penalties to perform miracles, to move mountains, to raise from the dead: My reply would be: "I cannot." I should sit still and watch the whole universe pass to its destruction rather than raise a hand to knife a fellow. This may be poor, anæmic; but there it is, a positive fact.
There are moments when I have awful misgivings: Is this blessed Journal worth while? I really don't know, and that's the harassing fact of the matter. If only I were sure of myself, if only I were capable of an impartial view! But I am too fond of myself to be able to see myself objectively. I wish I knew for certain what I am and how much I am worth. There are such possibilities about the situation; it may turn out tremendously, or else explode in a soap bubble. It is the torture of Tantalus to be so uncertain. I should be relieved to know even the worst. I would almost gladly burn my MSS. in the pleasure of having my curiosity satisfied. I go from the nadir of disappointment to the zenith of hope and back several times a week, and all the time I am additionally harassed by the perfect consciousness that it is all petty and pusillanimous to desire to be known and appreciated, that my ambition is a morbid diathesis of the mind. I am not such a fool either as not to see that there is but little satisfaction in posthumous fame, and I am not such a fool as not to realise that all fame is fleeting, and that the whole world itself is passing away.
I smile with sardonic amusement when I reflect how the War has changed my status. Before the War I was an interesting invalid. Now I am a lucky dog. Then, I was a star turn in tragedy; now I am drowned and ignored in an overcrowded chorus. No valetudinarian was ever more unpleasantly jostled out of his self-compassion. Itis difficult to accustom myself to the new role all at once: I had begun to lose the faculty for sympathising in others' griefs. It is hard to have to realise that in all this slaughter, my own superfluous life has become negligible and scarcely anyone's concern but my own. In this colossalsauve-qui-peutwhich is developing, who can stay to consider a useless mouth? Am I not a comfortable parasite? And, God forgive me, an Egotist to boot?
The War is searching out everyone, concentrating a beam of inquisitive light upon everyone's mind and character and publishing it for all the world to see. And the consequence to many honest folk has been a keen personal disappointment. We ignoble persons had thought we were better than we really are. We scarcely anticipated that the War was going to discover for us our emotions so despicably small by comparison, or our hearts so riddled with selfish motives. In the wild race for security during these dangerous times, men and women have all been sailing so closehauled to the wind that their eyes have been glued to their own forepeaks with never a thought for others: fathers have vied with one another in procuring safe jobs for their sons, wives have been bitter and recriminating at the security of other wives' husbands. The men themselves plot constantly for staff appointments, and everyone is pulling strings who can. Bereavement has brought bitterness and immunity indifference.
And how pathetically some of us cling still to fragments of the old regime that has already passed—like ship-wrecked mariners to floating wreckage, to the manner of the conservatoire amid the thunder of all Europe being broken up; to our newspaper gossip and parish teas, to our cherished aims—wealth, fame, success—in spite of all,ruat coelum!Mr. A.C. Benson and his trickling, comfortable Essays, Mr. Shaw and his Scintillations—they are all there as before, revolving like haggard windmills in a devastated landscape! A little while ago, I read in the local newspaper which I get up from the country two columns concerning the accidental death of an old woman, while two lines were used to record the death of a townsman at the front from anaerial dart. Behold this poor rag! staggering along under the burden of the War in a passionate endeavour to preserve the old-time interest in an old woman's decease. Yet more or less we are all in the same case: I still write my Journal and play Patience of an evening, and an old lady I know still reads as before the short items of gossip in the papers, neglecting articles and leaders.... We are like a nest of frightened ants when someone lifts the stone. That is the world just now.
September5.
... I was so ashamed of having to fall back upon such ignominious publications for my literary efforts that on presenting him with two copies, I told the following lie to save my face:
"They were two essays of mine left over at the beginning of the War, you know. My usual channel became blocked so I had to have recourse to these."
"Where do you publish as a rule?" he innocently asked.
"Oh! several in theManchester Guardian," I told him out of vanity. "But of course every respectable journal now has closed down to extra-war topics."
I lie out of vanity. And then I confess to lying—out of vanity too. So that one way or another I am determined to make kudos out of myself. Even this last reflection is written down with an excessive appreciation of its wit and the intention that it shall raise a smile.
September9.
Still nothing to report. The anxiety is telling on us all. The nurse has another case on the 22nd.
I looked at myself in the mirror this morning—nude, a most revolting picture. An emaciated human being is the most unlovely thing in creation. Some time ago a smart errand boy called out "Bovril" after me in the street.
On my way to the Station met two robust, brawny curates on the way to the daily weekday service—which is attendedonly by two decrepit old women in black, each with her prayer-book caught up to her breast as if she were afraid it might gallop off. That means a parson apiece—and in war time too.
September10.
My sympathy with myself is so unfailing that I don't deserve anybody else's. In many respects, however, this Journal I believe gives the impression that I behave myself in the public gaze much worse than I actually do. You must remember that herein I let myself go at a stretch gallop: in life I rein in, I am almost another person. Would you believe it, E—— says I am full of quick sympathy with others and extraordinarily cheerful, nay gay. Verily I lead a curious double existence: among most people, I pass for a complaisant, amiable, mealy-mouthed, furry if conceited creature. Here I stand revealed as a contemptuous, arrogant malcontent. My life has embittered mean fond, I have the crabbed temper of the disappointed man insufficiently developed yet to be very plainly visible beneath my innate affable, unassuming, humble, diffident, cheerful characteristics. With fools on every hand I am becoming insolent, aggressive, self-declamatory. Last evening came home and got down Robert Buchanan's sonnet, "When He returns and finds the world so drear," and felt constrained to read it out to E——. I poured out its acid sentiment with the base revenge of a vitriol thrower, and then became quiescent.
It is a helpless feeling, sitting still and watching circumstances pounding away at my malleable character and moulding it wrongly.
September14.
An American Neighbour
We have a delightful American neighbour here whose life revolves like the fly-wheel of an engine. Even when not in eruption his volcanic energy is always rumbling and can be heard. Seeing he is a globe trotter, I wassurprised to observe his most elaborate precautions for catching the train and getting a seat when he takes his wife and family to town. He first of all plants himself and all his property down at a certain carefully selected point along the platform as if he were in the wild west lying in wait for a Buffalo. Then as the train comes in, his eye fixes on an empty compartment as it passes and he dashes off after it in furious pursuit up the platform, shouting to his family to follow him. Having lassooed the compartment, squaw and piccaninnies are hustled in as if there was not a moment to lose, what time the black-coated, suburban Englishmen look on in pain and silence, and then slowly with offensive deliberation enter their respective carriages.
The Stockbroker
Another neighbour who interests me is mainly notable for his extraordinary gait. He is a man with a large, round head, a large round, dissolute looking face and fairly broad shoulders, below which everything tapers away to a pair of tiny feet neatly booted. These two little feet are excessively sensitive to road surface—one would say he had special sense organs on his toes, to judge by the manner in which he picks out his path along the country road in short, quick, fussy steps: his feet seem to dissect out the road as if boning a herring. A big bunion is as good as a sense organ, but his feet are too small and elegant.
September24.
The second nurse arrived to-day. Great air raid last night of which we heard nothing, thank God!
My nerves are giving way under the strain.... One leg (the left) drags abominably.... We shall want a bath-chair as well as a perambulator.
Crawled up thro' the path-fields to the uplands and sat in a field in the sun with my back against a haystack. I was so immobile in my dejection that Flies and Grass-hoppers came and perched about me. This made me furious. "I am not dead yet," I said, "get away," and Iwould suddenly drive them off.... In horrible dejection....
Even my mental powers are disintegrating—that's the rub. Some quite recent incidents I cannot remember even when reminded of them: they seem to have passed clean out of my mind—a remarkable sensation this.
My sensibility is dulled too. It chagrins me to find that my present plight by no means overwhelms me with anguish as it would have done once. It only worries me. I am just a worried ox.
September26.
The numbness in my right hand is getting very trying. ... The Baby puts the lid on it all. Can't you see the sordid picture? I can, and it haunts me. To be paralysed with a wife and child and no money—ugh!
Retribution proceeds with an almost mathematical accuracy of measure. It would necessitate a vernier rather than a chain. There is no mercy in Cause and Effect. It is inhuman clockwork. Every single act expended brings one its precise equivalent in return....
September28.
Still nothing to report.
I am astonished at the false impression these entries give of myself. The picture is incomplete anyhow. It represents the cloud of forebodings over my inner self but does not show the outward front I present to others. This is one of almost constant gaiety—unforced and quite natural. Ask E——, who said yesterday I was like a schoolboy.
"Camerade, I give you my hand!I give you my love more precious than money,I give you myself before preaching or law;Will you give me yourself? Will you come, travel with me?Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?"
She cut this out of her copy of Walt Whitman and gave it me soon after our engagement. It is very precious to me.
(On Sept. 29th, on the Doctor's advice I went away by the sea alone, my nerves being all unstrung. For an account of the miseries of this journey, see Dec. 12thinfra).
October3.
A wire to say Susan arrived 2.15 p.m. All well.
October5.
Home again with my darling. She is the most wonderful darling woman. Our love is for always. The Baby is a monster.
October23.
The fact that I can't write, finally bottles me up.[4]Damn! Damn! Damn! If only I can get my Essay on Journal Writers done. E—— goes on well. I have a thousand things to say.
October27.
Still awaiting a reprieve. I hate alarming the Doctor—he's such a cheerful man so I conceal my symptoms, quite a collection by now.
The prospect of breaking the news to her makes me miserable. I hide away as much as possible lest she should see. Imustspeak when she is well again.
October28.
Life has been very treacherous to me—this, the greatest treachery of all. But I don't care. I exult over it. Last night I lay awake and listened to the wind in the trees and was full of exultation.
Now I can only talk, but nobody to talk to. Shall hire a row of broomsticks. More and more, the War appears to me a tragic hoax.
November1.
E—— has had a set-back and is in bed again. However sclerotic my nerve tissue, I feel as flaccid as a jelly.
My God! how I loathe the prospect of death.
November3.
I must have some music or I shall hear the paralysis creeping. That is why I lie in bed and whistle.
"My dear Brown, what am I to do?"[5](I like to dramatise myself like that—it is an anodyne).
I feel as if I were living alone on Ascension Island with the tide coming up continuously, up and up and up.
November6.
She has knownallfrom the beginning! M—— warned hernotto marry me. How brave and loyal of her! What an ass I have been. I am overwhelmed with feelings of shame and self-contempt and sorrow for her. She is quite cheerful and an enormous help.
November12.
What a wreck my existence has become and—dragging down others with me.
If only I could rest assured that after I am dead these Journals will be tenderly cared for—as tenderly as this blessed infant! It would be cruel if even after I have paid the last penalty, my efforts and sufferings should continue to remain unknown or disregarded. What I would give to know the effect I shall produce when published! I am tortured by two doubts—whether these MSS. (the labour and hope of many years) will survive accidental loss and whether they really are of any value. I have no faith in either.
November14.
In fits of panic, I keep saying to myself: "My dear Brown, what am I to do?" But where is Brown? Brown, you devil! where are you?
... To think how I have acted the Prince to her when really I am only a beggar!
November16.
A little better and more cheerful: altho' my impregnable colon still holds out.
It would be nice if a physician from London one of these days were to gallop up hotspur, tether his horse to the gate post and dash in waving a reprieve—the discovery of a cure!
... I was in an impish mood and said: "Oh! dear, I'm full of misery."
"Don't be silly," she said, "so am I."
November17.
E—— has been telling me some of her emotions during and after her fateful visit to my Doctor just before our marriage. He did not spare her and even estimated the length of my life after I had once taken to my bed—about 12 months. I remember his consulting room so well—all its furniture and the photograph of Madam Blavatsky over the door, and I picture her to myself sitting opposite to him in a sullen silence listening to the whole lugubrious story. Then she said at last: "All this won't make any difference to me." She went home to her mother in a dream, along the streets I have followed so often. I can follow all her footsteps in imagination and keep on retracing them. It hurts, but I do so because it seems to make her some amends for my being childishly unconscious at the time. Poor darling woman—if only I had known! My instinct was right—I felt in my bones it was wrong to marry, yet here was M—— urging me on. "You marry," her mother said to her, "I'll stand by you," which was right royal of her. There followed some trying months of married life with this white hot secret in her bosom as a barricade to perfect intimacy; me she saw always under this cloud of crude disgusting pathos making her say a hundred times to herself: "He doesn't know;" then Zeppelin raids and a few symptoms began to grow obvious, until what before shehad to take on trust from the Doctor came diabolically true before her eyes. Thank God that's all over at last. I know her now for all she is worth—her loyalty and devotion, her courage and strength. If only I had something to give her in return! something more than the dregs of a life and a constitutional pessimism. I greatly desire to make some sacrifice, but I am so poor these days, so very much a pauper on her charity, there is no sacrifice I can make. Even my life would scarcely be a sacrifice in the circumstances—it is hard not to be able to give when onewantsto give.
November20.
In the doldrums. Tired of this damnablefar niente,—I am being gently smothered under a mountain of feathers. I should like to engage upon some cold, hard, glittering intellectualism.
"I want to read Kant," I said. The Baby slept, E—— was sewing and N—— writing letters. I leaned back in my armchair beside the bookshelf and began to read out the titles of my books in a loud voice.
"My dear!" E—— said.
"I am caressing my past," I answered. "Wiedersheim'sComparative Anatomy of Vertebrates, Smith Woodward'sVertebrate Palæontology—why it's like visiting old prospects and seeing how the moss has grown over the stones."
I hummed a comic song and then said: "As I can't burn the house down, I shall go to bed."
N——: "You can talk if you like, it won't interfere."
E——: "He's talking to his besoms."
"Certainly," I said to N——, absent-mindedly.
E——: "You ought to have said 'Thank you.'"
I blew out my cheeks and E—— laughed.
N——: "How do you spell 'regimental'?"
I told her—wrongly, and E—— said I was in a devilish mood.
"If we say that we have no sin" I chanted in reply, "we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." I next gavea bit out of a speech by Disraeli with exaggerated rhetorical gestures.
E—— (with pity): "Poor young man."
Presently she came over and in a tired way put her arms around my neck so I immediately began to sing "Rock of Ages, cleft for me," in the bass, which immediately reminded me of dear old Dad, whose favourite hymn it was.... Then I imitated the Baby. And then to bed fretful and very bitter.
November27.
... I wish I could die of heart failure—and at once! What a luxury that would be as compared with my present prospect!
A Tomtit on the fence this morning made me dissolve in tears:—self-pity I believe. I remember Tomtits in ——shire. Put on a gramophone record and—ugh! but I'm too sick to write.
November28.
The shock I gave my spinal column in 1915 up in the Lakes undoubtedly re-awakened activity among the bacteria. Luck for you! I, of all persons to concuss my spine!!
... I listen to the kettle singing, I look at the pictures in the fire, read a bit, ask what time it is, see the Baby "topped and tailed," yawn, blow my nose, put on a gramophone record—I have the idea of passing on the midnight with no pain to the tune of some healing ragtime.
November29.
The anniversary of our engagement day two years ago. How mad the idea of marriage seemed to me—and my instinct was right: if only I had known! Yet she says she does not regret anything.
This morning I turned to read with avidity accounts of the last hours of Keats, Gibbon, Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire.I gained astonishing comfort out of this, especially in the last ... who died of G.P.I. in a Brussels Hospital.
E—— is awfully courageous and,—as usual ready to do everything in her power. How can I ever express sufficient gratitude to these two dear women (and my wife, above all) for casting in their lot knowingly with mine?
December1.
I believe I am good for another 12 months without abnormal worries. Just now, of course, the Slug ain't exactly on the thorn—on the cabbage in fact as E—— suggested. The Grasshopper is much of a burden and the voice of the Turtle has gone from my land (where did all these Bible phrases come from?). The first bark of the Wolf (God save us, 'tis all the Animal Kingdom sliding down my penholder) was heard with the reduction in her work to-day, and I suspect there's worse to come with a sovereign already only worth 12s. 6d.
December4.
The Baby touch is the most harrowing of all. If we were childless we should be merely unfortunate, but an infant....
December11.
Am receiving ionisation treatment from an electrical therapeutist—a quack! He is a sort of electrician—still, if he mends my bells I'll kiss his boots. As for ——, he is no better than a byreman, and I call him Hodge. This is not the first time I have felt driven to act behind the back of the Profession. In 1912, being desperate, and M—— worse than a headache, I greedily and credulously sucked in the advice of my boarding-house proprietor and went to see a homœopathist in Finsbury Circus. He proved to be a charlatan at 10s. 6d. a time, and tho' I realised it at once, I religiously travelled about for a month or more with tinctures and drop-bottle.I could write a book on the Doctors I have known and the blunders they have made about me.... The therapeutist took me for 33. I feel 63. I am 27. What a wreck I am, and....
December12.
It is so agreeable to be able to write again that I write now for the sheer physical pleasure of being able to use a pen and form letters.
An Adventure in Search of Health
About the end of September, I began to feel so ill that Nurse went for the Doctor who assured me that E—— was all right—I need not worry—"You go away at once and get some fresh air," and so forth. "I feel quite ill," I said, struggling to break the news.
"Sort of nervous?" he enquired good-naturedly, "run down? I should get right away at once."
I began tentatively. "Well, I have a rather long medical history and perhaps ... you ... might care to read the certificate of my London Doctor?"
I went to my escritoire and returned with M——'s letter addressed to "The M.O. examining Mr. B."
Hodge pulled out the missive, studied the brief note carefully and long, at the same time drawing in his breath—deeply, and gnawing the back of his hand.
"I know all about it," I said to relieve him.
"Is it quite certain? about this disease?" he said presently. "You are very young for it."
"I think there is no doubt," and he began to put me thro' the usual tricks.
"I should go right away at once," he said, "and go on with your arsenic. And whatever you do—don't worry—your wife is all right."
After beseeching him to keep silence about it as I thought she did not know, I shewed him out and locked up the certificate again.
Next morning I felt thoroughly cornered: I was notreally fit enough to travel; my hand and leg were daily growing more and more paralysed and J—— wired to say she could not put me up as they were going away for the week end. So I wired back engaging rooms, as with the nurse in the house and E—— as she was, I simply could not stay at home....
On the way to the Station I was still in two minds whether or not to pull the taxi up at the Nursing Home and go inside, but harassing debate as it was, our rapidly diminishing bank balance finally drove me on.
---- came up to London with me and sought out a comfortable corner seat, but by the time the train left, a mother and a crying child had got in and everywhere else was full. A girl opposite who saw —— hand me a brandy flask and knew I was ill, looked at me compassionately.
At Reading, another woman with a baby got in and both babies cried in chorus, jangling my nerves to bits!—until I got out into the corridor, by a miracle not falling down, with one leg very feeble and treacherous. All seats were taken, excepting a first-class compartment where I looked in enviously at a lucky youth stretched out asleep full length along the empty seat.
All the people and the noise of the train began to make me fret, so I sought out the repose of a lavatory where I remained eating sandwiches and an apple for the best part of an hour. It was good to be alone.
Later on, I discovered an empty seat in a compartment occupied by persons whose questionable appearance my short sight entirely failed to make me aware of until I got inside with them. They were a family of Sheenies, father, mother and three children, whose joint emanations in a closed-up railway carriage made an effluvium like to kill a regiment of guards. They were E. end pawnbrokers or dealers in second-hand clothes.
I was too nervous to appear rude by immediately with-drawing, so I said politely to the man clad in second-hand furs: "Is that seat taken?"
He affected to be almost asleep. So I repeated. He stared at me and then said: