July 26, 2025 • 20 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 This journal is not only a vibrant historical document but also a profoundly moving and poetic piece of personal literature.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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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section four of a last diary by w NP 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. The Cottage on the Shore January
(00:27):
twenty fourth, nineteen nineteen. It was as mysterious as Stevenson's
pavilion on the Lynx. For a long time I never
noticed any indication of its being inhabited, save a few
chickens at the back, which no one seemed to feed.
I could see it from miles around, as it was
situated in a desolate, treeless waste thousands of acres of
(00:49):
marshes and dug ponds known as the Myers on the
one side, and on the other a wilderness of sandy
lynx and sand tills, swarming of rabbits known as the burrows.
Immediately in front, the waters of a broad tidal estuary
came up almost to the door during spring tides. The
nearest human habitation was the lighthouse a mile away round
(01:12):
the corner on the sands near the harbor bar. In
my rambles in search of bird or beast, I used
occasionally will eating sandwiches at midday on a sand till
top to turn my field glasses on the cottage idly.
For long I saw no one, Then one spring, while
thousands of lap winds circled above my head, calling indignantly
(01:36):
at me. Little boyo and larks dotted the blue sky
everywhere in little white, hot needle points of song. I
saw a tiny man, a mannikin, come out of this
tiny cottage a doll's house, and throw some corn to
the chickens. He is three miles away, and by the
time that I arrived at the cottage, the little man
(01:56):
had disappeared. It was a little four room cottage with
no path leading up to it, no garden, no enclosure,
only a few hardy shrubs to keep the sandy soil
from drifting. For a long time, I never saw him again,
and began to think he had been a hallucination. But
the desolate cottage was still there, and the chickens were
(02:19):
still alive, so they must have been fed. Then one
day I ran up against him on the myers and
we exchanged greetings. He was a round, tubby short man
with a stubble of beard. Devon folk would have called
him Bungy stuggy. His face bore a ludicrous resemblance to
(02:40):
the monkey in the Monkey brand advertisement, only fatter and rounder.
We discussed birds. He was the gamekeeper and became fast friends.
He would take me the round of his duck ponds,
and sometimes he sent me a postcard when there were
wild swans or geese in Olva, or when he had
(03:01):
discovered a stranger on his water. But this did not
dispel the mystery of the cottage. But he had a
woman inside. His presence was never suspected until I had
occasion to knock at the door. There was no answer
and no sound. All the windows were shut. I knocked
again and heard distant noise. Then there were long preparatory noises,
(03:27):
as if someone were climbing up from an underground cellar
or cave, or wandering down a long dark passage. Bolts
were drawn and powerful enough they sounded to make faster portcullis,
and I watched the door opening with curiosity at all
fat middle aged woman stood there, blinking at me like
(03:47):
an owl unaccustomed to daylight. Her eyes were weak blue,
and her face puffy and red. Oh is fedder about?
I inquired, without changing the muscle of her face. She
replied mechanically no. But Freda said, if the young gentleman called,
(04:08):
I was to say that the shovelers brought off their brood,
all right? I thanked her and departed, and she was
obviously embarrassed in her moping countenance. I detected a startled
look Robinson Crusoe as it were discovering Friday all at
once about any advertising Friday. I heard her bolting the
(04:31):
door again, and I strolled off down by the water
side to examine the tide rack. It was almost eerie
to hear the cackle of herring goals overhead. They seemed
to be laughing at the stupidity of human nature. There
are some things the imagination boggles at. For example, what
(04:51):
did that woman in that desolate cottage do? What did
she think about? What were her wants? Her grievances? Where
were her relatives? Did she ever love or want little babies?
Did murder stories interest her at all? Drugs? That is
(05:11):
an easy explanation to jump at some horrible vice theatrical
in reality I should have found. I expect the answer
would be just nothing at all. She did nothing, thought nothing,
perhaps only feared a little. So she always bolted the
door and hid herself away. I suppose if one saw
(05:35):
nothing bigger than a king plover or a seagull during
the twelve months, and had no noises other than the
trumpet of wild swans and the cries of Feder's wildfowl,
a tall man six feet high with a voice like
a human beings must seem a little disconcerting. January twenty sixth,
(05:56):
nineteen nineteen. Here's some of thethmetic which ought to please me,
but it doesn't. I wrote twelve papers in The Zoologist
in the years nineteen o five to nineteen ten, six
in the p ZS nineteen twelve to nineteen sixteen, seven
(06:18):
in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History nineteen twelve
to nineteen sixteen, three in Bulletin of Entomological Research, two
BM pamphlets, in addition to eighteen literary efforts, some in
newspapers and some not published, and other old scientific papers
and different periodicals such as British Birds, the Journal of
(06:41):
Animal Behavior, etc. In all sixty five publications. Further in
my locker lie six unpublished literary manuscripts, seventeen volumes of
journal post quarto pre War one, as thickness, twelve smaller
(07:03):
volumes written in boyhood, six volumes post quarto ones of
abstracted entries from the journal, two post quarto volumes of
abstract abstracted from the volumes of abstract for application purposes.
In vulgar parlance Cacotheus Scrivendy, January twenty seventh, nineteen nineteen.
(07:33):
Have you ever considered what a fever of anticipation must
be raging in me? As I sit by the fire
day after day awaiting the constantly delayed publication of this
my journal. How I strain to hold it, to smell
the fresh ink, to hear the binding crackle as I
open it out, and above all, to read what one
of the foremost literary men thinks about me and my book.
(07:57):
I wait, with head on the block, my child brought
to receive my farewell blessings. Will it come in time?
I nearly died last month of flu, and get worse
almost daily. I'm running a neck and neck race up
the straight of my evil genius on the black horse.
It is touch and go who wins? And if I do,
(08:20):
I expect some horrible forfeit will be exacted of me.
Layas magest day for my audacity in challenging the stars
in their courses and defeating them. My life has certainly
been an astonishing episode in human story. To me, it
appears as a titanic struggle between consuming ambition and adverse fortune.
(08:44):
Behold a penniless youth firsting for knowledge, introduced into the
world out of sheer devilment, hundreds of miles from a
university with a towering ambition, be cursed with ill health
and a twofold nature pleasure loving as well as lay beloving.
The continuous, almost cunning frustration of my endeavors long ago
(09:06):
gave me a sense of struggle with some evil genius.
Think of the elaborate precautions I took my manuscript during
the air raids. I saw each bomb labeled Barbellian's contemptible ambition.
Consider the duplication of abstracts. I saw an army of
housemaids prowling around to throw them on the fire. After
(09:28):
Carlile's French Revolution, I have been consciously contesting with an
incendiary a bomber from Hunland, a wicked housemaid, a whole
world of wicked folk in league with a hostile spirit,
decides on killing and obliterating me and my ambition, a
grotesque couple, a monkey asprider, hippogriff, an ass with a jabberwock. True,
(09:53):
he has ruined me, yet the struggle is not over.
With n determination, I am getting on, still crawling on
all thoughts, with the dagger between my teeth. I'm mauled, battered, scorched,
but not slain. The dag out I hope to see
(10:17):
published by Messrs Chatteau and Windus next month. You can
search all history and fiction for an ambition more powerful
than mine and not find it. No, not Napoleon, not
Vilhelm's second, nor Keats. No, I'm not proud of it,
(10:38):
not at all. The one day is that I remain sane,
the possessed of such a demon. I am sane, or
I cannot make fun of it as I do. Ah,
my God, it is a ridiculous wheatness. But the leopard
cannot change his spots, and I feel just as hopelessly
spotty as a leopard. January twenty fifth, nineteen nineteen. The
(11:04):
rest is silence. I should like this inscribed at the
end of this garrulous journal, an inscription for the base
of my self erected Monument Roebotham, the modern Homer January thirtieth,
nineteen nineteen, The Human Epic, the twelfth Epic, perm of
(11:27):
the World, the story of the Universe and prehistoric Man,
the vanished continent in the Atlantic, the Ice Age, the
Any Mounts, corals, and population of the Primeval Ocean. These
latter cantos have been made the subject of interesting lectures.
The Bard, other epics by Robotham, the Modern Homer, God
(11:51):
and the Devil, the Swiss Lake Dwellers, The Epic of
the Empire London Charlmore, each epic two shillings sixpence foil
one hundred and twenty one Charing Cross Road. Who is
the Bard? What a safe remark to make about the
(12:11):
anemones and corals? Who is row both of them? I
wish someone would lecture to me on him? What are
the other epics of the world. The twelfth has the
suggestion of a quack verse sold as a green liquid
from a four wheeled vehicle at a country fair. But
I can't run to two shillings sixpence. No I ache
(12:34):
to read and know you?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Oh row both of them? Row both of them? The
late mister Homer. I suppose say, though, who is this row?
Both snow lies on the ground outside. All the morning
it was too dark in my vaulte to read. Even
(12:56):
if it had been light, my eyesight had become temporarily
too draininged for me to see the print had my
eyes been all right. It was so cold that I
had to keep my hands under the bedcloths. All the afternoon,
I dozed. In the evening, I sat by the fire
and read urn Burial. During the day, at long intervals,
(13:19):
Nanny comes in and I shout out fatuities e g.
Still snowing or colder than ever. For some days I
give up, surrender voluntarily every earthly desire, when every thread
binding me to life is cut along to be free
(13:42):
and hack and cut in the frenzy frenzies in which
I curse and swear loud, myself alternating with fits of
terrible apathy, and I am indifferent to everything and everybody,
when the petty routine of my existence, washing, eating, and
sitting out goes on and carries me along with it mechanically.
(14:06):
And I wonder all the time why on Earth I
trouble about it. I look at human life and human
affairs with inhuman detachment. You're not from the side of
the angels. I am neither one thing nor the other,
neither dead nor alive, a nondescriptive creature in a no
man's land, and like all who keep a middle course,
(14:30):
not claimed of any enthusiasm by either side. The living
must be tired of me, and the dead don't seem
eager for my reception. Yet I must go somewhere, and
by Heavens I will not choose willingly. God knows the
bare heath of this world. The bare bodkin is an
(14:52):
alluring symbol to lonely paralytics, meaning liberty, fraternity, peace. Ever
since I came into it, I felt an alien in
this life, a refugee by reason of some prenatal extradiction.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I was ver alien to my father and mother. I
was different from them. I knew and was conscious of
the detachment they seemed. The children, and I was a
very old man. My father's youth which continued to flower
past middle age, and in the midst of adversity and
terrible affliction, and his courage and happiness of soul I
(15:31):
admired greatly. Though we were very far from one another,
I was proud and irritable. My mother I loved, and
she loved us, all with an instant love and tenderness
such as I have never seen in any mother since.
I did not realize this at the time. Alas her
love helped to wear her out. She never parted from me, however,
(15:54):
short a period without tears, tears certainly of weakness, especially later,
inability to stand steady any longer against the bufferings of
a hard lot. But we had little in common. I
was a queer duckling, self willed and determined at the
water's edge, heedless of her frantic plucks. Dear soul, if
(16:18):
you behave so, she had warn me sorrowfully, no one
you know will like you when you go out into
the world. I don't care, I would answer, I don't
want them to like me. I sha'n't like them. Theirs
would be the greater loss. Ours was a family, not uncommon,
I imagine at any time, in which the parents were under
(16:39):
the tolerant surveillance and patronage of the children. I was
a little Ladian among my schoolfellows. I knew I was different,
and accepted my ostracism as a quite natural consequence. I
never played games with them but after afternoon school hurried home,
go all down early tea prepared for me in the
(17:01):
kitchen by Martha, and went off on a long solitary
ramble till nightfall and later sometimes through orchards of very
old crooked trees, the air reeking of garlic, or humming
with the scoldings of tits whose nests so as after
in the holes and trees, through gorse covered thickets, over streams,
in woods, disturbing the game. I went across country, avoiding lanes,
(17:24):
roads and footpaths as if they were God forsaken. I
never entered into any intimacy with my masters. They and
the boys regarded me quizzically with a menacing now, then barbellion,
where are you sloping off to? I would flush and
parry with them with I've got to be home early tonight.
It was a lie. I knew it was a lie.
(17:46):
They knew it was a lie. But I prevented such
an invertebrate, sloppy, characterless exterior that no one felt curious
enough to probe further into my way of life, and
I was content to leave it at that. It's the
same in London. I was alien to my colleagues and
led a private life totally outside their imaginings. Among them
(18:12):
only are dear fellow has ventured to approach my life
and seek a communion with me, and I can't believe
he has suffered any hurt. I'm not alive wire now
at all events. My power station is dismantled, my career
a cinder path. I wish I could think that others
(18:33):
who have come near me are similarly immune. My wife
and child seem a remote distance from me. Strange to
say I am calmer in mind when they are away
as now, would that they could go on with their
lives as if I had never been. He is a
(18:53):
dear woman. I love her, and she I hope loves
me a little. She is my wife, and he is
my child. And my dreamy ineffectual existence poised between Earth
and Heaven cannot annul the physical contact. They may be
(19:15):
dream figures, but I created them and am responsible Forgive me,
Give me, and try to think well of me. I
am weak, and this great universe is a bully. This
disease has weakened the fiber of my life. Existence blows
(19:40):
me about anywhere. I'm possessed by any idle devil who
cares to take me, give me a shake and pass on.
Forebodings and evil visions. Imagine me pictures of horrible accidents, cataclysms, fears,
fears that the earth may drop into the sun. The
(20:01):
end of section four of a Last Diary,
Section four of a last diary by w NP 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. The Cottage on the Shore January
(00:27):
twenty fourth, nineteen nineteen. It was as mysterious as Stevenson's
pavilion on the Lynx. For a long time I never
noticed any indication of its being inhabited, save a few
chickens at the back, which no one seemed to feed.
I could see it from miles around, as it was
situated in a desolate, treeless waste thousands of acres of
(00:49):
marshes and dug ponds known as the Myers on the
one side, and on the other a wilderness of sandy
lynx and sand tills, swarming of rabbits known as the burrows.
Immediately in front, the waters of a broad tidal estuary
came up almost to the door during spring tides. The
nearest human habitation was the lighthouse a mile away round
(01:12):
the corner on the sands near the harbor bar. In
my rambles in search of bird or beast, I used
occasionally will eating sandwiches at midday on a sand till
top to turn my field glasses on the cottage idly.
For long I saw no one, Then one spring, while
thousands of lap winds circled above my head, calling indignantly
(01:36):
at me. Little boyo and larks dotted the blue sky
everywhere in little white, hot needle points of song. I
saw a tiny man, a mannikin, come out of this
tiny cottage a doll's house, and throw some corn to
the chickens. He is three miles away, and by the
time that I arrived at the cottage, the little man
(01:56):
had disappeared. It was a little four room cottage with
no path leading up to it, no garden, no enclosure,
only a few hardy shrubs to keep the sandy soil
from drifting. For a long time, I never saw him again,
and began to think he had been a hallucination. But
the desolate cottage was still there, and the chickens were
(02:19):
still alive, so they must have been fed. Then one
day I ran up against him on the myers and
we exchanged greetings. He was a round, tubby short man
with a stubble of beard. Devon folk would have called
him Bungy stuggy. His face bore a ludicrous resemblance to
(02:40):
the monkey in the Monkey brand advertisement, only fatter and rounder.
We discussed birds. He was the gamekeeper and became fast friends.
He would take me the round of his duck ponds,
and sometimes he sent me a postcard when there were
wild swans or geese in Olva, or when he had
(03:01):
discovered a stranger on his water. But this did not
dispel the mystery of the cottage. But he had a
woman inside. His presence was never suspected until I had
occasion to knock at the door. There was no answer
and no sound. All the windows were shut. I knocked
again and heard distant noise. Then there were long preparatory noises,
(03:27):
as if someone were climbing up from an underground cellar
or cave, or wandering down a long dark passage. Bolts
were drawn and powerful enough they sounded to make faster portcullis,
and I watched the door opening with curiosity at all
fat middle aged woman stood there, blinking at me like
(03:47):
an owl unaccustomed to daylight. Her eyes were weak blue,
and her face puffy and red. Oh is fedder about?
I inquired, without changing the muscle of her face. She
replied mechanically no. But Freda said, if the young gentleman called,
(04:08):
I was to say that the shovelers brought off their brood,
all right? I thanked her and departed, and she was
obviously embarrassed in her moping countenance. I detected a startled
look Robinson Crusoe as it were discovering Friday all at
once about any advertising Friday. I heard her bolting the
(04:31):
door again, and I strolled off down by the water
side to examine the tide rack. It was almost eerie
to hear the cackle of herring goals overhead. They seemed
to be laughing at the stupidity of human nature. There
are some things the imagination boggles at. For example, what
(04:51):
did that woman in that desolate cottage do? What did
she think about? What were her wants? Her grievances? Where
were her relatives? Did she ever love or want little babies?
Did murder stories interest her at all? Drugs? That is
(05:11):
an easy explanation to jump at some horrible vice theatrical
in reality I should have found. I expect the answer
would be just nothing at all. She did nothing, thought nothing,
perhaps only feared a little. So she always bolted the
door and hid herself away. I suppose if one saw
(05:35):
nothing bigger than a king plover or a seagull during
the twelve months, and had no noises other than the
trumpet of wild swans and the cries of Feder's wildfowl,
a tall man six feet high with a voice like
a human beings must seem a little disconcerting. January twenty sixth,
(05:56):
nineteen nineteen. Here's some of thethmetic which ought to please me,
but it doesn't. I wrote twelve papers in The Zoologist
in the years nineteen o five to nineteen ten, six
in the p ZS nineteen twelve to nineteen sixteen, seven
(06:18):
in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History nineteen twelve
to nineteen sixteen, three in Bulletin of Entomological Research, two
BM pamphlets, in addition to eighteen literary efforts, some in
newspapers and some not published, and other old scientific papers
and different periodicals such as British Birds, the Journal of
(06:41):
Animal Behavior, etc. In all sixty five publications. Further in
my locker lie six unpublished literary manuscripts, seventeen volumes of
journal post quarto pre War one, as thickness, twelve smaller
(07:03):
volumes written in boyhood, six volumes post quarto ones of
abstracted entries from the journal, two post quarto volumes of
abstract abstracted from the volumes of abstract for application purposes.
In vulgar parlance Cacotheus Scrivendy, January twenty seventh, nineteen nineteen.
(07:33):
Have you ever considered what a fever of anticipation must
be raging in me? As I sit by the fire
day after day awaiting the constantly delayed publication of this
my journal. How I strain to hold it, to smell
the fresh ink, to hear the binding crackle as I
open it out, and above all, to read what one
of the foremost literary men thinks about me and my book.
(07:57):
I wait, with head on the block, my child brought
to receive my farewell blessings. Will it come in time?
I nearly died last month of flu, and get worse
almost daily. I'm running a neck and neck race up
the straight of my evil genius on the black horse.
It is touch and go who wins? And if I do,
(08:20):
I expect some horrible forfeit will be exacted of me.
Layas magest day for my audacity in challenging the stars
in their courses and defeating them. My life has certainly
been an astonishing episode in human story. To me, it
appears as a titanic struggle between consuming ambition and adverse fortune.
(08:44):
Behold a penniless youth firsting for knowledge, introduced into the
world out of sheer devilment, hundreds of miles from a
university with a towering ambition, be cursed with ill health
and a twofold nature pleasure loving as well as lay beloving.
The continuous, almost cunning frustration of my endeavors long ago
(09:06):
gave me a sense of struggle with some evil genius.
Think of the elaborate precautions I took my manuscript during
the air raids. I saw each bomb labeled Barbellian's contemptible ambition.
Consider the duplication of abstracts. I saw an army of
housemaids prowling around to throw them on the fire. After
(09:28):
Carlile's French Revolution, I have been consciously contesting with an
incendiary a bomber from Hunland, a wicked housemaid, a whole
world of wicked folk in league with a hostile spirit,
decides on killing and obliterating me and my ambition, a
grotesque couple, a monkey asprider, hippogriff, an ass with a jabberwock. True,
(09:53):
he has ruined me, yet the struggle is not over.
With n determination, I am getting on, still crawling on
all thoughts, with the dagger between my teeth. I'm mauled, battered, scorched,
but not slain. The dag out I hope to see
(10:17):
published by Messrs Chatteau and Windus next month. You can
search all history and fiction for an ambition more powerful
than mine and not find it. No, not Napoleon, not
Vilhelm's second, nor Keats. No, I'm not proud of it,
(10:38):
not at all. The one day is that I remain sane,
the possessed of such a demon. I am sane, or
I cannot make fun of it as I do. Ah,
my God, it is a ridiculous wheatness. But the leopard
cannot change his spots, and I feel just as hopelessly
spotty as a leopard. January twenty fifth, nineteen nineteen. The
(11:04):
rest is silence. I should like this inscribed at the
end of this garrulous journal, an inscription for the base
of my self erected Monument Roebotham, the modern Homer January thirtieth,
nineteen nineteen, The Human Epic, the twelfth Epic, perm of
(11:27):
the World, the story of the Universe and prehistoric Man,
the vanished continent in the Atlantic, the Ice Age, the
Any Mounts, corals, and population of the Primeval Ocean. These
latter cantos have been made the subject of interesting lectures.
The Bard, other epics by Robotham, the Modern Homer, God
(11:51):
and the Devil, the Swiss Lake Dwellers, The Epic of
the Empire London Charlmore, each epic two shillings sixpence foil
one hundred and twenty one Charing Cross Road. Who is
the Bard? What a safe remark to make about the
(12:11):
anemones and corals? Who is row both of them? I
wish someone would lecture to me on him? What are
the other epics of the world. The twelfth has the
suggestion of a quack verse sold as a green liquid
from a four wheeled vehicle at a country fair. But
I can't run to two shillings sixpence. No I ache
(12:34):
to read and know you?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Oh row both of them? Row both of them? The
late mister Homer. I suppose say, though, who is this row?
Both snow lies on the ground outside. All the morning
it was too dark in my vaulte to read. Even
(12:56):
if it had been light, my eyesight had become temporarily
too draininged for me to see the print had my
eyes been all right. It was so cold that I
had to keep my hands under the bedcloths. All the afternoon,
I dozed. In the evening, I sat by the fire
and read urn Burial. During the day, at long intervals,
(13:19):
Nanny comes in and I shout out fatuities e g.
Still snowing or colder than ever. For some days I
give up, surrender voluntarily every earthly desire, when every thread
binding me to life is cut along to be free
(13:42):
and hack and cut in the frenzy frenzies in which
I curse and swear loud, myself alternating with fits of
terrible apathy, and I am indifferent to everything and everybody,
when the petty routine of my existence, washing, eating, and
sitting out goes on and carries me along with it mechanically.
(14:06):
And I wonder all the time why on Earth I
trouble about it. I look at human life and human
affairs with inhuman detachment. You're not from the side of
the angels. I am neither one thing nor the other,
neither dead nor alive, a nondescriptive creature in a no
man's land, and like all who keep a middle course,
(14:30):
not claimed of any enthusiasm by either side. The living
must be tired of me, and the dead don't seem
eager for my reception. Yet I must go somewhere, and
by Heavens I will not choose willingly. God knows the
bare heath of this world. The bare bodkin is an
(14:52):
alluring symbol to lonely paralytics, meaning liberty, fraternity, peace. Ever
since I came into it, I felt an alien in
this life, a refugee by reason of some prenatal extradiction.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I was ver alien to my father and mother. I
was different from them. I knew and was conscious of
the detachment they seemed. The children, and I was a
very old man. My father's youth which continued to flower
past middle age, and in the midst of adversity and
terrible affliction, and his courage and happiness of soul I
(15:31):
admired greatly. Though we were very far from one another,
I was proud and irritable. My mother I loved, and
she loved us, all with an instant love and tenderness
such as I have never seen in any mother since.
I did not realize this at the time. Alas her
love helped to wear her out. She never parted from me, however,
(15:54):
short a period without tears, tears certainly of weakness, especially later,
inability to stand steady any longer against the bufferings of
a hard lot. But we had little in common. I
was a queer duckling, self willed and determined at the
water's edge, heedless of her frantic plucks. Dear soul, if
(16:18):
you behave so, she had warn me sorrowfully, no one
you know will like you when you go out into
the world. I don't care, I would answer, I don't
want them to like me. I sha'n't like them. Theirs
would be the greater loss. Ours was a family, not uncommon,
I imagine at any time, in which the parents were under
(16:39):
the tolerant surveillance and patronage of the children. I was
a little Ladian among my schoolfellows. I knew I was different,
and accepted my ostracism as a quite natural consequence. I
never played games with them but after afternoon school hurried home,
go all down early tea prepared for me in the
(17:01):
kitchen by Martha, and went off on a long solitary
ramble till nightfall and later sometimes through orchards of very
old crooked trees, the air reeking of garlic, or humming
with the scoldings of tits whose nests so as after
in the holes and trees, through gorse covered thickets, over streams,
in woods, disturbing the game. I went across country, avoiding lanes,
(17:24):
roads and footpaths as if they were God forsaken. I
never entered into any intimacy with my masters. They and
the boys regarded me quizzically with a menacing now, then barbellion,
where are you sloping off to? I would flush and
parry with them with I've got to be home early tonight.
It was a lie. I knew it was a lie.
(17:46):
They knew it was a lie. But I prevented such
an invertebrate, sloppy, characterless exterior that no one felt curious
enough to probe further into my way of life, and
I was content to leave it at that. It's the
same in London. I was alien to my colleagues and
led a private life totally outside their imaginings. Among them
(18:12):
only are dear fellow has ventured to approach my life
and seek a communion with me, and I can't believe
he has suffered any hurt. I'm not alive wire now
at all events. My power station is dismantled, my career
a cinder path. I wish I could think that others
(18:33):
who have come near me are similarly immune. My wife
and child seem a remote distance from me. Strange to
say I am calmer in mind when they are away
as now, would that they could go on with their
lives as if I had never been. He is a
(18:53):
dear woman. I love her, and she I hope loves
me a little. She is my wife, and he is
my child. And my dreamy ineffectual existence poised between Earth
and Heaven cannot annul the physical contact. They may be
(19:15):
dream figures, but I created them and am responsible Forgive me,
Give me, and try to think well of me. I
am weak, and this great universe is a bully. This
disease has weakened the fiber of my life. Existence blows
(19:40):
me about anywhere. I'm possessed by any idle devil who
cares to take me, give me a shake and pass on.
Forebodings and evil visions. Imagine me pictures of horrible accidents, cataclysms, fears,
fears that the earth may drop into the sun. The
(20:01):
end of section four of a Last Diary,
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