July 26, 2025 • 28 mins
Dive into the captivating final journal entries of British naturalist Bruce Frederick Cummings. This poignant narrative stretches from March 1918 to June 1919, a tumultuous period that saw the end of WWI. It’s a book that follows the successful publication of Cummings previous journal, The Journal of a Disappointed Man. In this more concise volume, Cummings offers his contemplative reflections on the end of the war, tinged with the realization that while the world celebrated peace, he was grappling with failing health. His body may have been succumbing to multiple sclerosis, but his emotional and intellectual clarity remained until the end. This journal is not only a vibrant historical document but also a profoundly moving and poetic piece of personal literature. - Summary by Adam Whybray
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Section three of a last diary by W. N. P. Barbellion.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Nineteen nineteen January first, nineteen nineteen.
(00:31):
My dear Arthur, if it is a boy, call him
Andrew Chatto Windus, then perhaps the firm will give him
a royalty when he is published at the font. My
life here has quite changed its orientation. I am no
longer an intellectual snob. If I were, he and I
would have parted here now. I never liked to take
(00:54):
her to the b M in my petty way, because
there all the values are intellectual. I write this by
candle light in bed in the room above. He is
in bed with flu. We have had days of cold rain,
and just now it drips drearily off the roof, and
the wind blows drearily in gusts around the cottage, as
(01:15):
if tired of blowing, and as if blowing prospects were
nothing to be roaring about. Wilson, President Wilson is my hero.
I worship him. I could ask him to stamp across
my prostate body to save getting his feet wet in
(01:37):
a puddle. But I know nothing about him save what
I read in the nation, and I don't want to
supposing I discovered traits, I have had enough of disenchantment
to last me a lifetime. If he is not the
greatest figure in modern history, then there's no money in
Wall Street. January third, nineteen nineteen. She taxes me with indifference, says,
(02:06):
my sympathy is cold. By God, this is hard to bear.
But she is so desperate, she is lunging out right
and left at all. I fear for her mental balance.
What's going to happen to us? Why does everyone seem
to have forsaken us? Ah, it is almost too hard
(02:28):
for me to bear, and I can't break down. Unlike Ice,
I can't melt. I had a presentiment of evil awaiting
us about now. I don't know why, unless long experience
of it produces a nose for it, so that I
can smell it in advance. January fourth, nineteen nineteen. I've
(02:55):
talked of being in love with one's own ruin basskret seth,
of life to suffer, of being in despair, light, frivolous talk,
and the most such moods are only short lungs between
the spasms of agony, of suffering. One longs to be
(03:15):
free of them, as of acute physical pain, to be unconscious.
I look forward to night, to darkness, rest and sleep.
I sleep well between twelve and six, and then watch
the dawn from black, and the owl's hoot to gray,
and the barncock's crow to white, and the blackbird's whistle,
(03:39):
the oak beam and my ceiling. The Japanese print on
the wall comes slowly into view. And I dread them.
I dread the day with my whole soul. Each dawn
is hopeless. Yes, it is true. They have not buried
me deep enough. I don't think I'm buried at all.
(04:02):
They have not even taken me down from the tree,
and my wife. They're just nailing up. I can never
forget wherever I may be, in heaven or hell. Her
figure in dressing gown and shawl, drawn up, erect but
swaying because she is so weak before me at the
far side, she'd just been bending over me and kissing me,
(04:26):
hot cheeks and hot tears that mingled and bound us
together to that moment forever. Her head tilted towards the ceiling,
and her poor face looking so ill and screwed up
as she half whispered, Oh God, it's so hopeless. I
think that picture is impressed even on the four walls
(04:48):
of the room. Its memory is photographed in the air,
to haunt those who may live here in the time.
To cub, I said, fight it out, dear, don't give in.
I believe in a personal devil. The human spirit is unconquerable.
You'll come through a few fight. It was but a
(05:10):
few weeks ago that she came home one evening, dug
out from a drawer her beautiful dance dress, got into it,
and did a pass soul for my pleasure round the
little cottage room. That ogre fate was drawing out her
golden wing and mocking her loss of liberty. Ah, the
(05:30):
times we intended to have together. January eighth, nineteen nineteen.
I lie stiff and contorted till nurse arrives at nine thirty.
She straightens me out and bolsters me up breakfast at
nine cigarettes while I listen with ravenous ears for the
(05:53):
postman no letter for me. Then PLoP right down to
the depth among the weeds and goblins, of the deep
see you for an hour. There usually is no letter
for me. My chief discovery in sickness and misfortune is
the callousness of people to our case. Not from hardheartedness,
(06:13):
everyone is kind, but from absence of sympathetic imagination. People
don't know the horrors, and they can't imagine them. They
are unimaginable. You'll notice how suicides time and again in
farewell notes to their closest and dearests have the same refrain.
(06:33):
I don't believe even you can realize all I suffer,
poor devil. Of course, not beyond a certain points. Suffering
must be born alone, and so must extreme joy. Ah,
we are lonely barks January thirteenth, nineteen nineteen. All the
(06:58):
postman brought me today was an in come tax form.
Last night, nurse having put me back to bed, shall
I shut up your legs? Be no, thank you. They've
been bent up all the evening, and it's a relief
to have them out straight later. Be before you go,
ye might uncross my legs. She pulls bedclothes back, seizes
(07:22):
my feet, one in each hand, and forces them apart,
chanting humorously any scissors to grind as I have pointed
out to her the sartorious muscle, being on the inside
of thigh and stronger than the others, has the effect
of crossing my legs when a tantanic spasm occurs. And
(07:43):
there good night be and a good night to you,
and I'll come in first thing in the morning. Exit
I lie on my back and rest a while. Then
I force myself onto the left side by putting my
right arm over the left side of the bed, beneath
the woodwork and pulling my right arm is stronger than
(08:05):
any of the other limbs. To night, nurse had not
placed me in the middle of the bed. I was
too much over on the right side, so even my
long arm could not reach down beneath the woodwork on
the left. I cursed Nanny for a scabby old bean, struggled,
and at last got over on my left side. The
(08:26):
next thing was to get my legs bent up now
out as stiff and straight as Ferrule's when lying on
the left side. I long ago found out that it
is useless to get my right leg up first, as
it only shoots out again when I come to grapple
with the left. So I put my right arm down,
seized the left leg just above the knee and pulled.
(08:49):
The first result is always a violent spasm in the
legs and back, but I hang on and presently it
dies away and the leg begins to move upward a little.
Last night Nanny uncrossed my legs but was not careful
to separate them. Consequently, knee stuck a side by side
(09:09):
to knee and foot to foot as if glued, and
I found in pulling at my left I had the
stubborn live weight of both to lift up. I would
get them part way, then by a careless movement of
the hand on a ticklish spot, both would shoot out again.
So on for an hour. My only relief to curse Nanny,
(09:33):
and thus any time any week these last eighteen months.
But I have faith and hope and love. In spite
of all, I forgive even Nanny. January nineteenth, nineteen nineteen.
(09:53):
The situation is eased. He is at Brighton for a
change and has PA with her. She came up from
Wales with the nurse after seven months visit. But I'm
heart sore and unhappy. January twentieth, nineteen nineteen. If I
were to sum up my life in one word, I
(10:14):
should say suffocation. Ah has been my one blowhole. Now
I look forward to a little oxygen when my journal
is published. I'm delighted and horrified at the same time.
What will my relatives say? It will be the surprise
of their lives. I regard it as a revanche. The
(10:39):
world has always gagged and suppressed me. Now I turn
and hit it in the belly. January twenty second, nineteen nineteen.
I'm now lodging alone under one roof with Nanny. Makes
me think of some of Sterne's adventures in the sentimental Journey.
(11:00):
I must shut my eyes very tight to see the
likeness and imagine very hard. This is a selection from
last night's conversation. Remember she is deaf old and obstinate.
She hates to be instructed or corrected, hence her ignorance
and general incapacity ornithology. N I think a sparrow out
(11:25):
of the back as young birds. By the way she
carries off the food, b it's too early for young sparrows.
A sparrow is too worldly wise to encumber himself of
a young family in January, or in February or March,
for that matter. And I've seen young sparrows in March. B.
(11:46):
Why didn't you write to the papers about it? And
there wasn't so much writing to the papers in my days.
But there were things I could have written about young plovers.
For example, I used to catch and hold in my
lap you know the plover. It's called the lap wing.
Sometimes only a few young at a time. Be four
(12:09):
and yes, Now Charlie used to show me partridge's nests
with as many as twenty four B yes, but laid
probably by more than one. Hen Charlie had. It was
all one bird. The prettiest nest he ever showed me
was a green finch's. B What was that like? And
(12:31):
it was swung underneath the bough of a fir tree
right at the end. B That was not a green fincher's.
And wow, Charlie said it was, and he showed it
to all of us. We all saw it. B. It
was the nest of a gold crest. And yes, Charlie
(12:52):
had a wonderful collection of eggs. He could name them
all and labeled the names on them. They would cover
the table and all set out. Be yes, and oh oh,
I forgot another nest. He showed me a kingfisher's. Be
what was that like, And it was right down among
(13:12):
some reeds of a stream. B what were the eggs like?
And there were no eggs in it when I saw it.
Another pretty be that was not a kingfisher's nest. A
kingfisher nests at the end of a hole in the
bank of the stream. And Charlie said it was Another
(13:33):
pretty nest? Was the robin's be. The prettiest nest of all,
I think is the long tailed tits? And oh yes,
I know that the what's it like? And I can't
recollect be? All arched over with sticks and lined with
green leaves? And oh yes, I suspect whoever he was
(14:02):
could not tell a hawk from a handsaw, even when
the wind was southerly. Now, what a stupid old woman
not to make better use of me. January twenty third,
nineteen nineteen. Have been sustaining a hell of tedium by
reading a sloppy novel sentimental Muclage called Conrad in Quest
(14:28):
of His Youth, who sent me in quest of mine?
I see now that my youth was over before I
came to London. For never after did I experience such
electric tremors of joy and fear as E g over
As a small boy, I knew her and always lifted
my hat. But one day, at the age of sixteen,
(14:51):
a heart like nascent oxygen. Though I did not know it,
I lifted my hat, and in response to her smile,
fell via in love. During country rambles, I like to
pause and carve her initials in the bark of the tree.
It pleased me to confide my burning secret to the
birds and wild things. I knew it was safe in
(15:14):
their keeping, and I always hoped she might come along
one day and see the letters there and feel curiosity. Yeah,
she couldn't find out. I dare say they're still legible
in places, some of them of exquisite rural beauty. Though
the letters themselves probably now look obscured and distorted by
(15:35):
the evergrowing bark. The tree is, in locality doubtless as
still as beautiful. Upon a poet's page, I wrote, of
old two letters of her name. Part seemed she of
the effulgent thought. Whence that high singer's rapture came. When
now I turned the leaf, the same immortal light illoms
(15:58):
the lay, But from the lets her name the radiance
has waned away. For a whole year I was in agony,
meeting her constantly in the town, but never daring to
stop and speak. He used to return home after a
short cap lifting encounter with an intolerable ache that I
(16:20):
did not understand. Even in subsequent miseries, I do not
believe I suffered mental pain equal to this in acuteness.
I used to lift my cap to her on the
high street, then dart down side street and around so
as to meet her again. And every time I met
her came a raging, stormy conflict between fear and desire.
(16:43):
I wanted to stop. My heart always failed me. How
I cursed myself for a pultruon the very next moment.
I always haunted all the localities, park concerts, skating rink
where I thought to see her. In church on Sundays,
I became electrified if she was there. One afternoon, at
(17:05):
a concert in company of my sister, I determined on
a bold measure. I left before it was over, saw
my sister home, and at once darted back to the
hall and met my paragon coming out. She was with
her friend. How I hated her and her friend's mother.
How I feared her. I was seventeen, she was seventeen,
(17:27):
and of ravishing for genial beauty. I spoke, I said, obviously,
how did you enjoy the concert? Well? The other two
walked on. She replied very much. That was all I
could think of, nothing more. So I left her and
she rejoined her friends. It had been a terrible nervous
(17:50):
strained to me. At the crucial second, my nose twitched
and I felt my face contorted. But I walked home
on air, and my song sang like a bird. It
was the beautiful rhapsody of a boy. There was nothing
carnal in it. Indeed, the poor girl was idealized, aloft
(18:11):
into something scarcely human. But that at the moment of
speaking to her, I was in the power of an
unprecedented emotion is obvious. If I write that neither before
nor after has anything ever caused facial twitching, it is
evidence of my ardor and youth. Our acquaintance remained tenuous
(18:35):
for long. I was shy and inexperienced. I was too
shy to write. I heard rumors that she was staying
by the sea, so I went down and wandered about
to try to see her in vain. I went down
another day, and it began to pour with rain, so
I spent all my time sheltering under doorways and shop awnings,
(18:57):
cursing my luck and groaning at a waste of my
precious time. There was a large halibut on a fishmonger's
stool I posted in my diary, but not caught. I
think of this coast then follows abruptly a daughter of
the God's tree walked, divinely tall and most divinely fair.
(19:22):
I bought a local paper in the high Street, and
examining the visitor's list, I went through hundreds of names,
and that the end saw the most recent arrivals will
be found on page five. I turned to page five
and found nothing there. I complained to the manager. Ah, yes,
I know an unfortunate oversight, sir. If you will leave
(19:45):
your name and address, I will see it appears next
week's issue. I felt silly and slunk off, saying, oh,
never mind, I don't care much about it. It is
the more worrying to me because I know one it
is wasting good time. Two a common occurrence to others,
and they all get over it. Three there is no
(20:07):
comfort in study or reading. Knowledge is dull and dry.
Poetry seems to be to be more attractive. Then immediately
follows a description of a ring snake, with notes on
its anatomy. Then a few weeks later, have not seen
my beloved all the week? Where on earth has she
(20:27):
been hiding herself? And again I cannot hope ever to
see more wonderful eyes, the richest, sweetest brown amber, soft
yet bright. At length we became friends, wrote letters to
one another. Her first one was an event and went
for walks. Of course, the next stage was kissing her.
(20:53):
Took me over another twelve months to kiss her. It
must have been close on nineteen. Who had been walking
in the woods all the afternoon, then had tea in
the garden tea rooms. We sat in the green arbor
till after dark. I was in a terrible state. Restlessness
(21:16):
and fever were exhausting me. Desire struggled with pride. What
if she smacked my face? Then I lit a cigarette
for her. He used to buy her little heliotrope boxes
of cigarettes labeled in gold, my darling greatly daring, I
put my left arm round her neck and holding the
(21:38):
match box, struck a light and kissed her. At the
same moment she said, I ought not to let you
really quite calm. I was in too much of a
turmoil to answer, but kissed her again. I kissed her
many times after that. One wet afternoon we had spent
(21:59):
kissing in a linen hay by a country lane. Coming home,
we met her sister's baby, and she stopped to lean
over the pram and crow. This irritated me, and I
strolled on. Do you like babies, I asked when she
came up, Yes, she answered, do you not? Much? Said
I with dryness, and changed all. I thought to be
(22:21):
almost an indelicate subject. And after all, a baby is
only a kiss carried to a rational conclusion in natural sequence,
sometimes arithmetical, sometimes geometrical. It depends on the length of
the engagement. But it was curious how this kissing destroyed
(22:45):
my ideal. I soon knew I was not in love
with callous self possession. I was investigating a new sensation
and found it very enjoyable. I kiss you, I said
to her one in the park, But you never kiss me.
She at once gave me a passionate token on my lips,
(23:07):
and having exacted thus much tribute, I sank into complacency,
self adulation, and ultimately indifference. I had been surcharged the
relief was too complete. After exchanging impassioned verses, ah, such tosh,
(23:31):
each other's photographs and plenty of letters, my romance died
a natural death. My agony in sweat became a trifle,
And when I wished to blot from my memory out
of boyish sense of shame, doubtless I broke her heart.
She had left the town when one morning I received
(23:53):
a last pathetic appeal. I remember now the nausea that
love letter caused me. I put it on the fire
and thought, heavens, what a fool the girl is. In
nineteen thirteen I met her again and had the effrontery
to go to her home and have dinner with her
(24:13):
people see May thirty first and June third, nineteen thirteen. Now,
in my old age, I like to gaze back on
this flashing gem of youth. It still reflects the light,
and she is a princess again. Love in the Valley
(24:34):
becomes a personal memory instead of someone else's poem. Ah,
what a heart I had in those days, a nascent
oxygen with an affinity for every pretty girl who smiled
at me. I fell in love with a post office girl,
a silversmith's daughter, a grocer's daughter, the daughter of a judge.
(24:57):
For months I worshiped and bought every kind of photograph
of her. But I've never seen her in my life,
and now she's dead sea fruit. I never set eyes
on any beautiful women until I came to London. Then
I was dazzled by them all in every rank or
station in the street or on the street, in the
(25:20):
Cafe de la Europe or the Cafe Royal, pretty laughing girls,
handsome women, or beautiful pieces of mere flesh. Only I
was doomed to destruction from the first. If I had
not developed disease, ye I had come up from the
country a healthy, lusty youth, I might have got on
(25:41):
the rocks. Now that the blood is show, it is
difficult to recall the anguish. That I only succumbed twice
is a marvel to me and a joy. My situation
at one time was fraught with dark possibilities. My secret
life was a tumult. I never went skylarking with jaunty
(26:03):
pounds in the West End. I crept along the streets alone.
All this time I was alone in dirty diggings by myself.
I am consumed with self pity at the thought. I
cannot understand how saints like Augustine and Tongstoy confess how
(26:23):
they went with women in their youth, but recall no
sense of nausea, and they just deplore them or all lapse.
When send Augustine's mother enjoined him never to lie with
his neighbor's wife, he'd laughed at the advice as womanish.
For myself, I never received any parental instruction. I first
(26:44):
learned of the wonder of generation through the dirty filter
of a barmaid's nasty mind. I remember telling me in
sardonic vane that the only advice his father ever gave
him on leaving home was to keep his bounds open.
The present generation is altered all that. Birds eggs were
(27:05):
another electrifying factor in my youth. I can remember tramping
to and fro all one warm June afternoon over a
bracken covered sandy waist, searching for a night jar's eggs.
H and I quartered out the ground systematically till presently,
after two hours search, the hen goat sucker flipped up
(27:28):
at my feet and fluttered away like a big moth
across the silvery bracken out of sight. Lying before me
on the ground were two long gray eggs, marbled like pebbles.
I turned away from this intoxicating vision, flicking my fingers
as if I had been bitten. Then I turned approached
(27:49):
slowly and gloated. It was just such an effect on
me as a girl's beautiful face used to make, equally
tantalizing and out of reach. I stared, fingered them, put
one to my lips. Then it was over. I had
(28:09):
to leave them, and an equal thrill at goat suckers
eggs could never return again. The end of section three
of a last Diary
Section three of a last diary by W. N. P. Barbellion.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Nineteen nineteen January first, nineteen nineteen.
(00:31):
My dear Arthur, if it is a boy, call him
Andrew Chatto Windus, then perhaps the firm will give him
a royalty when he is published at the font. My
life here has quite changed its orientation. I am no
longer an intellectual snob. If I were, he and I
would have parted here now. I never liked to take
(00:54):
her to the b M in my petty way, because
there all the values are intellectual. I write this by
candle light in bed in the room above. He is
in bed with flu. We have had days of cold rain,
and just now it drips drearily off the roof, and
the wind blows drearily in gusts around the cottage, as
(01:15):
if tired of blowing, and as if blowing prospects were
nothing to be roaring about. Wilson, President Wilson is my hero.
I worship him. I could ask him to stamp across
my prostate body to save getting his feet wet in
(01:37):
a puddle. But I know nothing about him save what
I read in the nation, and I don't want to
supposing I discovered traits, I have had enough of disenchantment
to last me a lifetime. If he is not the
greatest figure in modern history, then there's no money in
Wall Street. January third, nineteen nineteen. She taxes me with indifference, says,
(02:06):
my sympathy is cold. By God, this is hard to bear.
But she is so desperate, she is lunging out right
and left at all. I fear for her mental balance.
What's going to happen to us? Why does everyone seem
to have forsaken us? Ah, it is almost too hard
(02:28):
for me to bear, and I can't break down. Unlike Ice,
I can't melt. I had a presentiment of evil awaiting
us about now. I don't know why, unless long experience
of it produces a nose for it, so that I
can smell it in advance. January fourth, nineteen nineteen. I've
(02:55):
talked of being in love with one's own ruin basskret seth,
of life to suffer, of being in despair, light, frivolous talk,
and the most such moods are only short lungs between
the spasms of agony, of suffering. One longs to be
(03:15):
free of them, as of acute physical pain, to be unconscious.
I look forward to night, to darkness, rest and sleep.
I sleep well between twelve and six, and then watch
the dawn from black, and the owl's hoot to gray,
and the barncock's crow to white, and the blackbird's whistle,
(03:39):
the oak beam and my ceiling. The Japanese print on
the wall comes slowly into view. And I dread them.
I dread the day with my whole soul. Each dawn
is hopeless. Yes, it is true. They have not buried
me deep enough. I don't think I'm buried at all.
(04:02):
They have not even taken me down from the tree,
and my wife. They're just nailing up. I can never
forget wherever I may be, in heaven or hell. Her
figure in dressing gown and shawl, drawn up, erect but
swaying because she is so weak before me at the
far side, she'd just been bending over me and kissing me,
(04:26):
hot cheeks and hot tears that mingled and bound us
together to that moment forever. Her head tilted towards the ceiling,
and her poor face looking so ill and screwed up
as she half whispered, Oh God, it's so hopeless. I
think that picture is impressed even on the four walls
(04:48):
of the room. Its memory is photographed in the air,
to haunt those who may live here in the time.
To cub, I said, fight it out, dear, don't give in.
I believe in a personal devil. The human spirit is unconquerable.
You'll come through a few fight. It was but a
(05:10):
few weeks ago that she came home one evening, dug
out from a drawer her beautiful dance dress, got into it,
and did a pass soul for my pleasure round the
little cottage room. That ogre fate was drawing out her
golden wing and mocking her loss of liberty. Ah, the
(05:30):
times we intended to have together. January eighth, nineteen nineteen.
I lie stiff and contorted till nurse arrives at nine thirty.
She straightens me out and bolsters me up breakfast at
nine cigarettes while I listen with ravenous ears for the
(05:53):
postman no letter for me. Then PLoP right down to
the depth among the weeds and goblins, of the deep
see you for an hour. There usually is no letter
for me. My chief discovery in sickness and misfortune is
the callousness of people to our case. Not from hardheartedness,
(06:13):
everyone is kind, but from absence of sympathetic imagination. People
don't know the horrors, and they can't imagine them. They
are unimaginable. You'll notice how suicides time and again in
farewell notes to their closest and dearests have the same refrain.
(06:33):
I don't believe even you can realize all I suffer,
poor devil. Of course, not beyond a certain points. Suffering
must be born alone, and so must extreme joy. Ah,
we are lonely barks January thirteenth, nineteen nineteen. All the
(06:58):
postman brought me today was an in come tax form.
Last night, nurse having put me back to bed, shall
I shut up your legs? Be no, thank you. They've
been bent up all the evening, and it's a relief
to have them out straight later. Be before you go,
ye might uncross my legs. She pulls bedclothes back, seizes
(07:22):
my feet, one in each hand, and forces them apart,
chanting humorously any scissors to grind as I have pointed
out to her the sartorious muscle, being on the inside
of thigh and stronger than the others, has the effect
of crossing my legs when a tantanic spasm occurs. And
(07:43):
there good night be and a good night to you,
and I'll come in first thing in the morning. Exit
I lie on my back and rest a while. Then
I force myself onto the left side by putting my
right arm over the left side of the bed, beneath
the woodwork and pulling my right arm is stronger than
(08:05):
any of the other limbs. To night, nurse had not
placed me in the middle of the bed. I was
too much over on the right side, so even my
long arm could not reach down beneath the woodwork on
the left. I cursed Nanny for a scabby old bean, struggled,
and at last got over on my left side. The
(08:26):
next thing was to get my legs bent up now
out as stiff and straight as Ferrule's when lying on
the left side. I long ago found out that it
is useless to get my right leg up first, as
it only shoots out again when I come to grapple
with the left. So I put my right arm down,
seized the left leg just above the knee and pulled.
(08:49):
The first result is always a violent spasm in the
legs and back, but I hang on and presently it
dies away and the leg begins to move upward a little.
Last night Nanny uncrossed my legs but was not careful
to separate them. Consequently, knee stuck a side by side
(09:09):
to knee and foot to foot as if glued, and
I found in pulling at my left I had the
stubborn live weight of both to lift up. I would
get them part way, then by a careless movement of
the hand on a ticklish spot, both would shoot out again.
So on for an hour. My only relief to curse Nanny,
(09:33):
and thus any time any week these last eighteen months.
But I have faith and hope and love. In spite
of all, I forgive even Nanny. January nineteenth, nineteen nineteen.
(09:53):
The situation is eased. He is at Brighton for a
change and has PA with her. She came up from
Wales with the nurse after seven months visit. But I'm
heart sore and unhappy. January twentieth, nineteen nineteen. If I
were to sum up my life in one word, I
(10:14):
should say suffocation. Ah has been my one blowhole. Now
I look forward to a little oxygen when my journal
is published. I'm delighted and horrified at the same time.
What will my relatives say? It will be the surprise
of their lives. I regard it as a revanche. The
(10:39):
world has always gagged and suppressed me. Now I turn
and hit it in the belly. January twenty second, nineteen nineteen.
I'm now lodging alone under one roof with Nanny. Makes
me think of some of Sterne's adventures in the sentimental Journey.
(11:00):
I must shut my eyes very tight to see the
likeness and imagine very hard. This is a selection from
last night's conversation. Remember she is deaf old and obstinate.
She hates to be instructed or corrected, hence her ignorance
and general incapacity ornithology. N I think a sparrow out
(11:25):
of the back as young birds. By the way she
carries off the food, b it's too early for young sparrows.
A sparrow is too worldly wise to encumber himself of
a young family in January, or in February or March,
for that matter. And I've seen young sparrows in March. B.
(11:46):
Why didn't you write to the papers about it? And
there wasn't so much writing to the papers in my days.
But there were things I could have written about young plovers.
For example, I used to catch and hold in my
lap you know the plover. It's called the lap wing.
Sometimes only a few young at a time. Be four
(12:09):
and yes, Now Charlie used to show me partridge's nests
with as many as twenty four B yes, but laid
probably by more than one. Hen Charlie had. It was
all one bird. The prettiest nest he ever showed me
was a green finch's. B What was that like? And
(12:31):
it was swung underneath the bough of a fir tree
right at the end. B That was not a green fincher's.
And wow, Charlie said it was, and he showed it
to all of us. We all saw it. B. It
was the nest of a gold crest. And yes, Charlie
(12:52):
had a wonderful collection of eggs. He could name them
all and labeled the names on them. They would cover
the table and all set out. Be yes, and oh oh,
I forgot another nest. He showed me a kingfisher's. Be
what was that like, And it was right down among
(13:12):
some reeds of a stream. B what were the eggs like?
And there were no eggs in it when I saw it.
Another pretty be that was not a kingfisher's nest. A
kingfisher nests at the end of a hole in the
bank of the stream. And Charlie said it was Another
(13:33):
pretty nest? Was the robin's be. The prettiest nest of all,
I think is the long tailed tits? And oh yes,
I know that the what's it like? And I can't
recollect be? All arched over with sticks and lined with
green leaves? And oh yes, I suspect whoever he was
(14:02):
could not tell a hawk from a handsaw, even when
the wind was southerly. Now, what a stupid old woman
not to make better use of me. January twenty third,
nineteen nineteen. Have been sustaining a hell of tedium by
reading a sloppy novel sentimental Muclage called Conrad in Quest
(14:28):
of His Youth, who sent me in quest of mine?
I see now that my youth was over before I
came to London. For never after did I experience such
electric tremors of joy and fear as E g over
As a small boy, I knew her and always lifted
my hat. But one day, at the age of sixteen,
(14:51):
a heart like nascent oxygen. Though I did not know it,
I lifted my hat, and in response to her smile,
fell via in love. During country rambles, I like to
pause and carve her initials in the bark of the tree.
It pleased me to confide my burning secret to the
birds and wild things. I knew it was safe in
(15:14):
their keeping, and I always hoped she might come along
one day and see the letters there and feel curiosity. Yeah,
she couldn't find out. I dare say they're still legible
in places, some of them of exquisite rural beauty. Though
the letters themselves probably now look obscured and distorted by
(15:35):
the evergrowing bark. The tree is, in locality doubtless as
still as beautiful. Upon a poet's page, I wrote, of
old two letters of her name. Part seemed she of
the effulgent thought. Whence that high singer's rapture came. When
now I turned the leaf, the same immortal light illoms
(15:58):
the lay, But from the lets her name the radiance
has waned away. For a whole year I was in agony,
meeting her constantly in the town, but never daring to
stop and speak. He used to return home after a
short cap lifting encounter with an intolerable ache that I
(16:20):
did not understand. Even in subsequent miseries, I do not
believe I suffered mental pain equal to this in acuteness.
I used to lift my cap to her on the
high street, then dart down side street and around so
as to meet her again. And every time I met
her came a raging, stormy conflict between fear and desire.
(16:43):
I wanted to stop. My heart always failed me. How
I cursed myself for a pultruon the very next moment.
I always haunted all the localities, park concerts, skating rink
where I thought to see her. In church on Sundays,
I became electrified if she was there. One afternoon, at
(17:05):
a concert in company of my sister, I determined on
a bold measure. I left before it was over, saw
my sister home, and at once darted back to the
hall and met my paragon coming out. She was with
her friend. How I hated her and her friend's mother.
How I feared her. I was seventeen, she was seventeen,
(17:27):
and of ravishing for genial beauty. I spoke, I said, obviously,
how did you enjoy the concert? Well? The other two
walked on. She replied very much. That was all I
could think of, nothing more. So I left her and
she rejoined her friends. It had been a terrible nervous
(17:50):
strained to me. At the crucial second, my nose twitched
and I felt my face contorted. But I walked home
on air, and my song sang like a bird. It
was the beautiful rhapsody of a boy. There was nothing
carnal in it. Indeed, the poor girl was idealized, aloft
(18:11):
into something scarcely human. But that at the moment of
speaking to her, I was in the power of an
unprecedented emotion is obvious. If I write that neither before
nor after has anything ever caused facial twitching, it is
evidence of my ardor and youth. Our acquaintance remained tenuous
(18:35):
for long. I was shy and inexperienced. I was too
shy to write. I heard rumors that she was staying
by the sea, so I went down and wandered about
to try to see her in vain. I went down
another day, and it began to pour with rain, so
I spent all my time sheltering under doorways and shop awnings,
(18:57):
cursing my luck and groaning at a waste of my
precious time. There was a large halibut on a fishmonger's
stool I posted in my diary, but not caught. I
think of this coast then follows abruptly a daughter of
the God's tree walked, divinely tall and most divinely fair.
(19:22):
I bought a local paper in the high Street, and
examining the visitor's list, I went through hundreds of names,
and that the end saw the most recent arrivals will
be found on page five. I turned to page five
and found nothing there. I complained to the manager. Ah, yes,
I know an unfortunate oversight, sir. If you will leave
(19:45):
your name and address, I will see it appears next
week's issue. I felt silly and slunk off, saying, oh,
never mind, I don't care much about it. It is
the more worrying to me because I know one it
is wasting good time. Two a common occurrence to others,
and they all get over it. Three there is no
(20:07):
comfort in study or reading. Knowledge is dull and dry.
Poetry seems to be to be more attractive. Then immediately
follows a description of a ring snake, with notes on
its anatomy. Then a few weeks later, have not seen
my beloved all the week? Where on earth has she
(20:27):
been hiding herself? And again I cannot hope ever to
see more wonderful eyes, the richest, sweetest brown amber, soft
yet bright. At length we became friends, wrote letters to
one another. Her first one was an event and went
for walks. Of course, the next stage was kissing her.
(20:53):
Took me over another twelve months to kiss her. It
must have been close on nineteen. Who had been walking
in the woods all the afternoon, then had tea in
the garden tea rooms. We sat in the green arbor
till after dark. I was in a terrible state. Restlessness
(21:16):
and fever were exhausting me. Desire struggled with pride. What
if she smacked my face? Then I lit a cigarette
for her. He used to buy her little heliotrope boxes
of cigarettes labeled in gold, my darling greatly daring, I
put my left arm round her neck and holding the
(21:38):
match box, struck a light and kissed her. At the
same moment she said, I ought not to let you
really quite calm. I was in too much of a
turmoil to answer, but kissed her again. I kissed her
many times after that. One wet afternoon we had spent
(21:59):
kissing in a linen hay by a country lane. Coming home,
we met her sister's baby, and she stopped to lean
over the pram and crow. This irritated me, and I
strolled on. Do you like babies, I asked when she
came up, Yes, she answered, do you not? Much? Said
I with dryness, and changed all. I thought to be
(22:21):
almost an indelicate subject. And after all, a baby is
only a kiss carried to a rational conclusion in natural sequence,
sometimes arithmetical, sometimes geometrical. It depends on the length of
the engagement. But it was curious how this kissing destroyed
(22:45):
my ideal. I soon knew I was not in love
with callous self possession. I was investigating a new sensation
and found it very enjoyable. I kiss you, I said
to her one in the park, But you never kiss me.
She at once gave me a passionate token on my lips,
(23:07):
and having exacted thus much tribute, I sank into complacency,
self adulation, and ultimately indifference. I had been surcharged the
relief was too complete. After exchanging impassioned verses, ah, such tosh,
(23:31):
each other's photographs and plenty of letters, my romance died
a natural death. My agony in sweat became a trifle,
And when I wished to blot from my memory out
of boyish sense of shame, doubtless I broke her heart.
She had left the town when one morning I received
(23:53):
a last pathetic appeal. I remember now the nausea that
love letter caused me. I put it on the fire
and thought, heavens, what a fool the girl is. In
nineteen thirteen I met her again and had the effrontery
to go to her home and have dinner with her
(24:13):
people see May thirty first and June third, nineteen thirteen. Now,
in my old age, I like to gaze back on
this flashing gem of youth. It still reflects the light,
and she is a princess again. Love in the Valley
(24:34):
becomes a personal memory instead of someone else's poem. Ah,
what a heart I had in those days, a nascent
oxygen with an affinity for every pretty girl who smiled
at me. I fell in love with a post office girl,
a silversmith's daughter, a grocer's daughter, the daughter of a judge.
(24:57):
For months I worshiped and bought every kind of photograph
of her. But I've never seen her in my life,
and now she's dead sea fruit. I never set eyes
on any beautiful women until I came to London. Then
I was dazzled by them all in every rank or
station in the street or on the street, in the
(25:20):
Cafe de la Europe or the Cafe Royal, pretty laughing girls,
handsome women, or beautiful pieces of mere flesh. Only I
was doomed to destruction from the first. If I had
not developed disease, ye I had come up from the
country a healthy, lusty youth, I might have got on
(25:41):
the rocks. Now that the blood is show, it is
difficult to recall the anguish. That I only succumbed twice
is a marvel to me and a joy. My situation
at one time was fraught with dark possibilities. My secret
life was a tumult. I never went skylarking with jaunty
(26:03):
pounds in the West End. I crept along the streets alone.
All this time I was alone in dirty diggings by myself.
I am consumed with self pity at the thought. I
cannot understand how saints like Augustine and Tongstoy confess how
(26:23):
they went with women in their youth, but recall no
sense of nausea, and they just deplore them or all lapse.
When send Augustine's mother enjoined him never to lie with
his neighbor's wife, he'd laughed at the advice as womanish.
For myself, I never received any parental instruction. I first
(26:44):
learned of the wonder of generation through the dirty filter
of a barmaid's nasty mind. I remember telling me in
sardonic vane that the only advice his father ever gave
him on leaving home was to keep his bounds open.
The present generation is altered all that. Birds eggs were
(27:05):
another electrifying factor in my youth. I can remember tramping
to and fro all one warm June afternoon over a
bracken covered sandy waist, searching for a night jar's eggs.
H and I quartered out the ground systematically till presently,
after two hours search, the hen goat sucker flipped up
(27:28):
at my feet and fluttered away like a big moth
across the silvery bracken out of sight. Lying before me
on the ground were two long gray eggs, marbled like pebbles.
I turned away from this intoxicating vision, flicking my fingers
as if I had been bitten. Then I turned approached
(27:49):
slowly and gloated. It was just such an effect on
me as a girl's beautiful face used to make, equally
tantalizing and out of reach. I stared, fingered them, put
one to my lips. Then it was over. I had
(28:09):
to leave them, and an equal thrill at goat suckers
eggs could never return again. The end of section three
of a last Diary
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