July 26, 2025 • 25 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 This journal is not only a vibrant historical document but also a profoundly moving and poetic piece of personal literature.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 (00:01):
Section seven 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. Analysis of the Journal of a
(00:28):
Disappointed Man, March tenth, nineteen nineteen. One Ambition two reflections
on death, Three intellectual curiosity, four self consciousness, five self
introspection six zest of living. I wonder if any reviewer
(00:52):
will bring out these points seven humor eight shamelessness. My
confessions are shameless. I confess, but do not repent. The
fact is my confessions are prompted not by ethical motives,
but intellectual The confessions are to me the interesting records
(01:16):
of a self investigator. If I live to read the
review notices, I shall properly criticize them. I shall be
criticizing the criticisms of my life, putting the reviewers right
a long, lean hand, stretching out at them from the tomb.
I shall play the part of boomerang and cop them one. Unexpectedly,
(01:39):
there will be a newspaper discussion is Barbellian Dead? And
I shall answer by a letter to the editor. Dear
Sir yes, I am dead. I killed myself off at
the end of my book because it was high time.
Your reviewer is incorrect in saying I died of creeping paralysis.
It was of another kindred but different disease. P s.
(02:03):
It may interest your readers to know that I am
not yet buried. Or dear sir, there is an inaccuracy
in your reviewer's statement. I was not in the Secret Service.
It should have been the Civil Service, of which I
was a member up to within eighteen months of my decease.
(02:24):
Or Dear Sir, I should be glad if you would
correct the impression generated by one of your correspondents that
Barbelian is the name of an evil spirit appearing on
Ulpurgus night. As a matter of fact, my forebears were
simple folk, tallow chandlers. In b March twelfth, nineteen nineteen,
(02:50):
out of the day and night a joy has taken
flight fresh spring and summer and winter. Or fill my
fate heart with grief, but with delight No more, oh
never more. These sobbing words bring a catch in my
breath and tears to my eyes. Dear Shelley, I too
(03:16):
have suffered. If no more, oh never more, no more, Oh,
never More, March fifteenth, nineteen nineteen. The first peep of
the Chick among the publisher's announcements in The Times, The
Journal of a Disappointed Man, a genuine confession of thwarted
(03:39):
ambition and disillusionment. I'm reading another of James Joyce's Ulysses,
running serially in that exotic periodical, The Little Review, which
announces on its cover that it makes no compromise with
the public taste. Ulysses is an interesting development. It's all
(04:01):
my idea, the technique I projected. According to the reviews,
Dorothy Richardson's Tunnel is a novel in the same manner,
intensive netting, in words, the continuous flow of consciousness and
semi consciousness. Of course, the novelists are behind the naturalists
and the recording of minute tie Edmund Cellus and Julian
(04:22):
Huxley and others have set down the life of some
species of birds in exhaustive detail, every flip of the tail,
every peck, preceding the grand drama of courtship and mating.
For this queer comparison lies between these naturalists and novelists
like William de Morgan, rather than Joyce. March sixteenth, seventeenth,
(04:45):
nineteen nineteen. I'm getting rapidly worse. One misery adds itself
to another as I explore the course of this hideous disease.
March seventeenth, nineteen nineteen. Here is Hector Burlios. It is
(05:09):
amazing memoirs writing to a friend for forgiveness for causing
him anxiety. But you know how my life fluctuates. One
day calm, dreary, rhythmical, the next board nerve, torn, snappy
and surly as a mangy dog, vicious as a thousand devils,
(05:29):
sick of life and ready to end it, were it
not for the frenzied happiness that draws ever nearer, for
the odd destiny that I feel is mine, for my
staunch friends, for music, and lastly, for curiosity. My life
is a story that interests me greatly. This verflucta curiosity
(05:52):
I could botanize over my own grave, attentively examine the
maggots out of my own brain. March eighteenth, nineteen nineteen. Mother,
she liked me to call her mother Hubbard Lepidopterus Hubbard.
(06:14):
She used to sign her letters. Hubbard had a pretty custom,
and she hated anyone to detect of putting every letter
she wrote to us, when stamped directly and sealed into
her bible for a minute or two, ostensibly to sanctify
the sealing up. Memories like these lurk and corners my
(06:36):
dismantled brain, like cobwebs, I've fetched them down with a
pen for a mop. I've had such a dear and
beautiful letter from age this morning, March nineteenth, nineteen nineteen,
(06:57):
while all alone, watching the loopholes spark lie I with life.
All dark feet tethered, hands fettered fast to the stone.
The grim walls, square lettered, were prisoned. Men's grown still strain.
The banner poles grew the wind's song westward. The banner
(07:20):
rolls over my wrong for all cos and paralytics selected
by E. March twentieth, nineteen nineteen. A letter from H. G. Wells,
My book, he says, interested him personally, as he once
(07:43):
tried hard to get into the BM in flowers time,
but failed. I don't think I should have found it
very suitable. No, he would have promptly finished on the
gallows for murdering the keeper. March twenty first, nineteen nineteen.
Another cobweb, an illustrated book of miscellanies called the World
(08:09):
of Wonders in our ancient bookcase at home, alongside E.
Liza Cook's poems how Its Visits to Remarkable Places, an
immense green volume of Hogarth's drawings, a dictionary of dates,
Rogers Vsaurus, et cetera. I remember distinctly the pictures of
(08:29):
the man in the iron mask, Threek, tubers and carrots
like human heads in a row across a page, snow crystals,
Indian jugglers, two amazons of heroic girth carrying swords striding
along sands. The swords were curved, and one lady was
(08:50):
much stouter than the other. He used to stare at
these pictures before I could read it, invented my own legends.
I always thought the platoes and carrots were a species
of savage. How many pictures I can recall that do
not know what they represent even now? March twenty sixth,
(09:15):
nineteen nineteen. Time lures me forward, but I've dug my
heels in awaiting those two old tortoises, Chiatto and windows.
(09:36):
March twenty seventh, nineteen nineteen. I've won. This morning, at
nine am, the book arrived C and W thoughtfully left
the pages to be cut. So I've been enjoying the
exquisite pleasure of cutting the pages of my own book.
And nothing's happened. No earthquake, no thunder and lightning, no
(09:58):
omen in the black sky. In fact, the sun is shining.
Publication next week, March twenty eighth, nineteen nineteen. Having stabbed
my arm and signed the contract, Now, when the clock strikes,
I'd like to say, o lente, lente, currite noctis equi.
(10:21):
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
the devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. But
I asked for it, have got it, and to the full,
and must fulfilled my undertaking. My feelings ceaseil. Today I
want to live in Hell's despite the day before, yesterday
(10:43):
I had my back to the wall and a feet
of sheer endurance. March thirtieth, nineteen nineteen. Now that I
have spurred my hippogriff to the journey's end, Now that
I have wrecked my will on that very obtuse gentleman,
my lord's destiny, who failed to take due measure of
his man. Now, as soon as I have freed myself
(11:06):
from the hard cocoon of my environment and can sweeten
soothe my warped frame of a little with the delicious
honey of kindly recognition. I can rest in the sun awhile,
soak up the warmth and sweetness into this tortured spirit,
and crave everyone's pardon before the end comes. But I
(11:29):
know that the journal will mean horror to some. I
realized that a strong minded man would, by instinct keep
his sufferings to himself, the Englishman above all. But I
doubt if I am an Englishman. Really. My true home,
I guess is further east. I have been recklessly, self
(11:51):
willed and inconsiderate, and I have no sort of excuse
except the most unprecedented provocation. I been in the grip
of more than one strong passion, and my moral strength
has been insufficient to struggle with them and throw them off.
I have been overcome, and the publication of my journal
(12:13):
is really the signal of my defeat. Ah. But it
takes a terrific lot of energy to set about putting
one's moral house in order. It is too late, and
I am too weakened. You must take me as I am,
and remember that with a longer life, just as I
(12:37):
might have done better things intellectually, so also morally. Give
me your love if you can. I love you all,
and because I love you, comfort myself despondency with the
thought that there must be some grain of goodness in me. Overlaid,
(12:59):
April first, nineteen nineteen. I love my hair to be combed.
It makes one realize what an avenue for self expression
was closed when man lost his tail. I bitterly regret
the loss of my tail. I loved the benison of
hot water, my rticating hands, the tip tac of our
(13:22):
cottage clock, a cigarette, many cigarettes, letters. These are all
my pleasures. Pills, the air cushion, hot bottle, a cramped
legs straightened, These are my reliefs. Sleep. This is my refuge.
R and I at the b M. April fifth, nineteen nineteen.
(13:50):
What friends we were. The mutual sympathy between us was complete,
so that our inter communication was telegraphic in its brevity,
frequently telepathic and wordless, yet all sufficing. He had an
extraordinary faculty for apt quotations. He loved Admiral Buzzer, Mister Middleton,
(14:14):
and similar cronies. Shakespeare was a never failing reservoir together
we passed along the streets to while rendezvous coats flapping hands, waving,
tongues wagging. Two slim youths, bespectacled, shoulders bent, bright eyed
(14:36):
used to lunch at Gloucester Road, sometimes in Soho and
in the summer in Kensington Gardens. Our lunch and talks
were wild and flippant, because in the evenings after dinner
at his rooms or at mine, that we conversed seriously
far into the stilly night, serious and earnest as only
youth can be. During the course of a year, our
(14:58):
discussions must have several times passed in stellar transit through
the whole zodiac intellectual, moral and social arcs. God how
we talked. I took charge of metaphysics and literature, are
of art and sociology. His room and mine at the
British Museum were near one another, on opposite side to
(15:19):
the same corridor. And one of my vivid memories of
those days is are coming in the course of the morning,
gently opening my door, stealing in and advancing slowly up
towards my table on tiptoe, eyebrows raised as far as
he could possibly get them, right up under his scalp,
arms down straight at the sides, hands raised at the wrists,
(15:41):
and performing continuous circular movements outward, while he softly whistled
some beautiful melody we'd heard the night before. I would
drop my dissections, turn and ask, how does that peace go?
That starts? I whistled a fragment. At lunch time, whoever
(16:04):
was first ready would visit the other's room, and should
the occupant's head be still bent over his work? The
same kind of remark was regularly made. Come, come, I
don't like to see this absorption in the trivial round.
Remember the man of the muckrake. The sun shines be heliotroopic.
Let gallows gape the dog, Let man go free. Our
(16:28):
intimacy nettled some of our colleagues. What are you two
conspirators up to? R in a black billycock and I
in a brown one, were tete a tete in the corridor,
discussing the modern drama, said to annoy, of course, Damon
(16:48):
and PYTHEUS sneered one, and we laughed aloud. We carried
our youth like a flag through those dusty galleries, and
our warm friendship was over, ringing challenge to all those
frosty pounds. April eighth, nineteen nineteen, went out yesterday for
(17:12):
the first time for nearly five months. A beautiful April day, warm,
a full bird chorus, the smell of violets, of wood smoke,
and the war was over. I felt I could, as
an honorable human being, look a long tailed tit in
(17:32):
the feathers now and not blench. The sky was above me,
scores of white e yachts floating in the sea of blue,
and my heart fluttered a little, and for a moment
my blood ran wine, until the inevitable reflection settled like
a blight. I should have preferred not to be reminded,
(17:53):
but the realization how beautiful the world is swept over me,
all unready in a mighty flood. Women are pretty things, really,
said he as she looked at photos in a picture paper.
Who was reborn in her mind in a flash of delight.
(18:18):
April tenth, nineteen nineteen, A quiet day from my heart,
full of loving kindness. For all given time, I could
change myself into something better. You may not believe it,
but even in my worst days, I once had a
big desire for self sacrifice. I was thrilled to find
(18:41):
that I was making someone happy by my love, and
deeply longed to surrender all for love. An enigma, April eleventh,
nineteen nineteen. In nineteen fifteen, I received a piece which
has puzzled me ever since. It is an enigma to
(19:06):
me as baffling as a piece of Coptic text. It
was in an uneducated hand, asking from museum pamphlet I
had written on the Laos signed tea wood, the Oogaria
princeps any suggestions. Nurse and I have lived here alone
(19:29):
for over a month, and she is kindness itself, cheerful,
willing to fetch and bring, never impatient with me or irritable,
a good soul. The Rabbit's Golgotha, April fourteenth, nineteen nineteen.
Those sand dunes. Their characteristic feature was rabbit's skulls, rabbits, scapuli, ribs,
(19:56):
pelvis's legs, bleached white and dry, rotting rabbits being mined
and gradually buried by gaudy red marked carrion beetles, pieces
of rabbits, fluff and fur, rabbits screams and the teeth
of a stoat a common sound, and the little round,
dry pellets of rabbits. More numberless than the snail shells.
(20:22):
And lastly rabbits. Rabbits hopping, racing, slinking, disappearing down holes,
always everywhere, showing the intruder, fleeting glimpses of the little
white patches on the under side of the stumpy tail,
the signal to disperse or dive into the sand. The
dunes are always associated in my mind with burning, hot,
(20:43):
cloudless summer days, during the whole long course for which
were out ceasing lap wingers flopped round my head, uttering
their crazy wails. Circuses of scimitar winged swift swished by
and screamed hysterically. The face the blue sky was dotted
at regular intervalms were singing larks, singing all day long
(21:04):
without intermittence, poised menacingly overhead, so that the white hot
needle points of their song seemed likely at any moment
to descend perpendicularly and penetrate the skull. Occasionally, a dazzling
white herongual would sail slowly, majestically in from the cliffs,
(21:24):
and from a much greater height than all the rest
of us, cry in a deep voice, ha ha ha,
like some supreme being. In sardonic amusement, at the vulgar
whirligig of life below him, as still summer day, Say
you the air was charged with sound, had you the
(21:46):
ears to hear? It is not merely the birds cries.
It is their dangerous living, feverish and intense that contributes
to this uproar of life. The heart muscles and wing
muscles give out a note as they contract. This is
a physiological fact. The interior of say a falcon's body
(22:08):
is a scene of dark sounding romance and incessant activity,
with the blood racing through the vessels, and the glands secreting,
and the muscles contracting. Just here at my feet is
an avalanche. Jugged boulders are sillier, descending and spreading out
in a fan shaped talus. Only sand grains, so I
cannot hear the crash of the boulders. But matter atomic
(22:30):
solar System's colossal behind all behind, every sight and every
other sound is the sound of the Great Sea, the
all powerful creator of the dunes, who, in a single
evening for a thousand ages are but an evening in
his calculations, could sweep them away, or sweep up another
(22:53):
area of sand and marim grass. As big one church
is already obliterated. That was yesterday to morrow. Maybe the
village further inland will have vanished too. This is the
secret of the fascination of the dunes. Superficially all seems
dead and dull. Reflection brings the deeper understanding of myriad
(23:16):
forms of life, creeping, running, springing, burrowing, of noisy, screaming,
struggling life dominated by the august secular movements of the
great Sea. Sometimes towards the end of the afternoon, I
would grow tired. The brilliant would become garish, Then leaving
(23:41):
the time, the eyebright, the wild pansies, the vipers, bergloss
and clusters an occasional teasel. After boxing every sort of
insect and every sort of plant that I had not
collected before the birds exert long ago swept into my cabinet,
I would hurry out to the shore, take off my clothes,
(24:01):
and be rebaptized by the sea. A hundred yards run
up the cool sands and back, and I was dry
and dallied a while in the sand hills before putting
on my shirt that smelled of stale sweat. It was
so good to divest myself of particularities that clung like
(24:22):
the burrs and my stockingness, and plunge into the universality
of the sea sub consciously. That was my motive and
the cause of my delight. April sixteenth, nineteen nineteen. I
am still miserable, especially on ease account that dear brave woman,
(24:46):
but I have undergone a change. My whole soul is
sweetened by the love of those near and dear to me,
by the sympathy of those reading my book. April twenty first,
nineteen nineteen. Nurse was cutting my beard and handed me
the mirror to report progress. The right mustache, I said, critically,
(25:12):
seems to droop down a lot. She twisted up the
left between finger and thumb, and then, in a flash,
before I had time to scream, damped her finger with
her tongue and gave a powerful screw to the right.
The end or section seven of A Last Diary by W. N. P.
(25:37):
Barbellion
Section seven 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. Analysis of the Journal of a
(00:28):
Disappointed Man, March tenth, nineteen nineteen. One Ambition two reflections
on death, Three intellectual curiosity, four self consciousness, five self
introspection six zest of living. I wonder if any reviewer
(00:52):
will bring out these points seven humor eight shamelessness. My
confessions are shameless. I confess, but do not repent. The
fact is my confessions are prompted not by ethical motives,
but intellectual The confessions are to me the interesting records
(01:16):
of a self investigator. If I live to read the
review notices, I shall properly criticize them. I shall be
criticizing the criticisms of my life, putting the reviewers right
a long, lean hand, stretching out at them from the tomb.
I shall play the part of boomerang and cop them one. Unexpectedly,
(01:39):
there will be a newspaper discussion is Barbellian Dead? And
I shall answer by a letter to the editor. Dear
Sir yes, I am dead. I killed myself off at
the end of my book because it was high time.
Your reviewer is incorrect in saying I died of creeping paralysis.
It was of another kindred but different disease. P s.
(02:03):
It may interest your readers to know that I am
not yet buried. Or dear sir, there is an inaccuracy
in your reviewer's statement. I was not in the Secret Service.
It should have been the Civil Service, of which I
was a member up to within eighteen months of my decease.
(02:24):
Or Dear Sir, I should be glad if you would
correct the impression generated by one of your correspondents that
Barbelian is the name of an evil spirit appearing on
Ulpurgus night. As a matter of fact, my forebears were
simple folk, tallow chandlers. In b March twelfth, nineteen nineteen,
(02:50):
out of the day and night a joy has taken
flight fresh spring and summer and winter. Or fill my
fate heart with grief, but with delight No more, oh
never more. These sobbing words bring a catch in my
breath and tears to my eyes. Dear Shelley, I too
(03:16):
have suffered. If no more, oh never more, no more, Oh,
never More, March fifteenth, nineteen nineteen. The first peep of
the Chick among the publisher's announcements in The Times, The
Journal of a Disappointed Man, a genuine confession of thwarted
(03:39):
ambition and disillusionment. I'm reading another of James Joyce's Ulysses,
running serially in that exotic periodical, The Little Review, which
announces on its cover that it makes no compromise with
the public taste. Ulysses is an interesting development. It's all
(04:01):
my idea, the technique I projected. According to the reviews,
Dorothy Richardson's Tunnel is a novel in the same manner,
intensive netting, in words, the continuous flow of consciousness and
semi consciousness. Of course, the novelists are behind the naturalists
and the recording of minute tie Edmund Cellus and Julian
(04:22):
Huxley and others have set down the life of some
species of birds in exhaustive detail, every flip of the tail,
every peck, preceding the grand drama of courtship and mating.
For this queer comparison lies between these naturalists and novelists
like William de Morgan, rather than Joyce. March sixteenth, seventeenth,
(04:45):
nineteen nineteen. I'm getting rapidly worse. One misery adds itself
to another as I explore the course of this hideous disease.
March seventeenth, nineteen nineteen. Here is Hector Burlios. It is
(05:09):
amazing memoirs writing to a friend for forgiveness for causing
him anxiety. But you know how my life fluctuates. One
day calm, dreary, rhythmical, the next board nerve, torn, snappy
and surly as a mangy dog, vicious as a thousand devils,
(05:29):
sick of life and ready to end it, were it
not for the frenzied happiness that draws ever nearer, for
the odd destiny that I feel is mine, for my
staunch friends, for music, and lastly, for curiosity. My life
is a story that interests me greatly. This verflucta curiosity
(05:52):
I could botanize over my own grave, attentively examine the
maggots out of my own brain. March eighteenth, nineteen nineteen. Mother,
she liked me to call her mother Hubbard Lepidopterus Hubbard.
(06:14):
She used to sign her letters. Hubbard had a pretty custom,
and she hated anyone to detect of putting every letter
she wrote to us, when stamped directly and sealed into
her bible for a minute or two, ostensibly to sanctify
the sealing up. Memories like these lurk and corners my
(06:36):
dismantled brain, like cobwebs, I've fetched them down with a
pen for a mop. I've had such a dear and
beautiful letter from age this morning, March nineteenth, nineteen nineteen,
(06:57):
while all alone, watching the loopholes spark lie I with life.
All dark feet tethered, hands fettered fast to the stone.
The grim walls, square lettered, were prisoned. Men's grown still strain.
The banner poles grew the wind's song westward. The banner
(07:20):
rolls over my wrong for all cos and paralytics selected
by E. March twentieth, nineteen nineteen. A letter from H. G. Wells,
My book, he says, interested him personally, as he once
(07:43):
tried hard to get into the BM in flowers time,
but failed. I don't think I should have found it
very suitable. No, he would have promptly finished on the
gallows for murdering the keeper. March twenty first, nineteen nineteen.
Another cobweb, an illustrated book of miscellanies called the World
(08:09):
of Wonders in our ancient bookcase at home, alongside E.
Liza Cook's poems how Its Visits to Remarkable Places, an
immense green volume of Hogarth's drawings, a dictionary of dates,
Rogers Vsaurus, et cetera. I remember distinctly the pictures of
(08:29):
the man in the iron mask, Threek, tubers and carrots
like human heads in a row across a page, snow crystals,
Indian jugglers, two amazons of heroic girth carrying swords striding
along sands. The swords were curved, and one lady was
(08:50):
much stouter than the other. He used to stare at
these pictures before I could read it, invented my own legends.
I always thought the platoes and carrots were a species
of savage. How many pictures I can recall that do
not know what they represent even now? March twenty sixth,
(09:15):
nineteen nineteen. Time lures me forward, but I've dug my
heels in awaiting those two old tortoises, Chiatto and windows.
(09:36):
March twenty seventh, nineteen nineteen. I've won. This morning, at
nine am, the book arrived C and W thoughtfully left
the pages to be cut. So I've been enjoying the
exquisite pleasure of cutting the pages of my own book.
And nothing's happened. No earthquake, no thunder and lightning, no
(09:58):
omen in the black sky. In fact, the sun is shining.
Publication next week, March twenty eighth, nineteen nineteen. Having stabbed
my arm and signed the contract, Now, when the clock strikes,
I'd like to say, o lente, lente, currite noctis equi.
(10:21):
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
the devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. But
I asked for it, have got it, and to the full,
and must fulfilled my undertaking. My feelings ceaseil. Today I
want to live in Hell's despite the day before, yesterday
(10:43):
I had my back to the wall and a feet
of sheer endurance. March thirtieth, nineteen nineteen. Now that I
have spurred my hippogriff to the journey's end, Now that
I have wrecked my will on that very obtuse gentleman,
my lord's destiny, who failed to take due measure of
his man. Now, as soon as I have freed myself
(11:06):
from the hard cocoon of my environment and can sweeten
soothe my warped frame of a little with the delicious
honey of kindly recognition. I can rest in the sun awhile,
soak up the warmth and sweetness into this tortured spirit,
and crave everyone's pardon before the end comes. But I
(11:29):
know that the journal will mean horror to some. I
realized that a strong minded man would, by instinct keep
his sufferings to himself, the Englishman above all. But I
doubt if I am an Englishman. Really. My true home,
I guess is further east. I have been recklessly, self
(11:51):
willed and inconsiderate, and I have no sort of excuse
except the most unprecedented provocation. I been in the grip
of more than one strong passion, and my moral strength
has been insufficient to struggle with them and throw them off.
I have been overcome, and the publication of my journal
(12:13):
is really the signal of my defeat. Ah. But it
takes a terrific lot of energy to set about putting
one's moral house in order. It is too late, and
I am too weakened. You must take me as I am,
and remember that with a longer life, just as I
(12:37):
might have done better things intellectually, so also morally. Give
me your love if you can. I love you all,
and because I love you, comfort myself despondency with the
thought that there must be some grain of goodness in me. Overlaid,
(12:59):
April first, nineteen nineteen. I love my hair to be combed.
It makes one realize what an avenue for self expression
was closed when man lost his tail. I bitterly regret
the loss of my tail. I loved the benison of
hot water, my rticating hands, the tip tac of our
(13:22):
cottage clock, a cigarette, many cigarettes, letters. These are all
my pleasures. Pills, the air cushion, hot bottle, a cramped
legs straightened, These are my reliefs. Sleep. This is my refuge.
R and I at the b M. April fifth, nineteen nineteen.
(13:50):
What friends we were. The mutual sympathy between us was complete,
so that our inter communication was telegraphic in its brevity,
frequently telepathic and wordless, yet all sufficing. He had an
extraordinary faculty for apt quotations. He loved Admiral Buzzer, Mister Middleton,
(14:14):
and similar cronies. Shakespeare was a never failing reservoir together
we passed along the streets to while rendezvous coats flapping hands, waving,
tongues wagging. Two slim youths, bespectacled, shoulders bent, bright eyed
(14:36):
used to lunch at Gloucester Road, sometimes in Soho and
in the summer in Kensington Gardens. Our lunch and talks
were wild and flippant, because in the evenings after dinner
at his rooms or at mine, that we conversed seriously
far into the stilly night, serious and earnest as only
youth can be. During the course of a year, our
(14:58):
discussions must have several times passed in stellar transit through
the whole zodiac intellectual, moral and social arcs. God how
we talked. I took charge of metaphysics and literature, are
of art and sociology. His room and mine at the
British Museum were near one another, on opposite side to
(15:19):
the same corridor. And one of my vivid memories of
those days is are coming in the course of the morning,
gently opening my door, stealing in and advancing slowly up
towards my table on tiptoe, eyebrows raised as far as
he could possibly get them, right up under his scalp,
arms down straight at the sides, hands raised at the wrists,
(15:41):
and performing continuous circular movements outward, while he softly whistled
some beautiful melody we'd heard the night before. I would
drop my dissections, turn and ask, how does that peace go?
That starts? I whistled a fragment. At lunch time, whoever
(16:04):
was first ready would visit the other's room, and should
the occupant's head be still bent over his work? The
same kind of remark was regularly made. Come, come, I
don't like to see this absorption in the trivial round.
Remember the man of the muckrake. The sun shines be heliotroopic.
Let gallows gape the dog, Let man go free. Our
(16:28):
intimacy nettled some of our colleagues. What are you two
conspirators up to? R in a black billycock and I
in a brown one, were tete a tete in the corridor,
discussing the modern drama, said to annoy, of course, Damon
(16:48):
and PYTHEUS sneered one, and we laughed aloud. We carried
our youth like a flag through those dusty galleries, and
our warm friendship was over, ringing challenge to all those
frosty pounds. April eighth, nineteen nineteen, went out yesterday for
(17:12):
the first time for nearly five months. A beautiful April day, warm,
a full bird chorus, the smell of violets, of wood smoke,
and the war was over. I felt I could, as
an honorable human being, look a long tailed tit in
(17:32):
the feathers now and not blench. The sky was above me,
scores of white e yachts floating in the sea of blue,
and my heart fluttered a little, and for a moment
my blood ran wine, until the inevitable reflection settled like
a blight. I should have preferred not to be reminded,
(17:53):
but the realization how beautiful the world is swept over me,
all unready in a mighty flood. Women are pretty things, really,
said he as she looked at photos in a picture paper.
Who was reborn in her mind in a flash of delight.
(18:18):
April tenth, nineteen nineteen, A quiet day from my heart,
full of loving kindness. For all given time, I could
change myself into something better. You may not believe it,
but even in my worst days, I once had a
big desire for self sacrifice. I was thrilled to find
(18:41):
that I was making someone happy by my love, and
deeply longed to surrender all for love. An enigma, April eleventh,
nineteen nineteen. In nineteen fifteen, I received a piece which
has puzzled me ever since. It is an enigma to
(19:06):
me as baffling as a piece of Coptic text. It
was in an uneducated hand, asking from museum pamphlet I
had written on the Laos signed tea wood, the Oogaria
princeps any suggestions. Nurse and I have lived here alone
(19:29):
for over a month, and she is kindness itself, cheerful,
willing to fetch and bring, never impatient with me or irritable,
a good soul. The Rabbit's Golgotha, April fourteenth, nineteen nineteen.
Those sand dunes. Their characteristic feature was rabbit's skulls, rabbits, scapuli, ribs,
(19:56):
pelvis's legs, bleached white and dry, rotting rabbits being mined
and gradually buried by gaudy red marked carrion beetles, pieces
of rabbits, fluff and fur, rabbits screams and the teeth
of a stoat a common sound, and the little round,
dry pellets of rabbits. More numberless than the snail shells.
(20:22):
And lastly rabbits. Rabbits hopping, racing, slinking, disappearing down holes,
always everywhere, showing the intruder, fleeting glimpses of the little
white patches on the under side of the stumpy tail,
the signal to disperse or dive into the sand. The
dunes are always associated in my mind with burning, hot,
(20:43):
cloudless summer days, during the whole long course for which
were out ceasing lap wingers flopped round my head, uttering
their crazy wails. Circuses of scimitar winged swift swished by
and screamed hysterically. The face the blue sky was dotted
at regular intervalms were singing larks, singing all day long
(21:04):
without intermittence, poised menacingly overhead, so that the white hot
needle points of their song seemed likely at any moment
to descend perpendicularly and penetrate the skull. Occasionally, a dazzling
white herongual would sail slowly, majestically in from the cliffs,
(21:24):
and from a much greater height than all the rest
of us, cry in a deep voice, ha ha ha,
like some supreme being. In sardonic amusement, at the vulgar
whirligig of life below him, as still summer day, Say
you the air was charged with sound, had you the
(21:46):
ears to hear? It is not merely the birds cries.
It is their dangerous living, feverish and intense that contributes
to this uproar of life. The heart muscles and wing
muscles give out a note as they contract. This is
a physiological fact. The interior of say a falcon's body
(22:08):
is a scene of dark sounding romance and incessant activity,
with the blood racing through the vessels, and the glands secreting,
and the muscles contracting. Just here at my feet is
an avalanche. Jugged boulders are sillier, descending and spreading out
in a fan shaped talus. Only sand grains, so I
cannot hear the crash of the boulders. But matter atomic
(22:30):
solar System's colossal behind all behind, every sight and every
other sound is the sound of the Great Sea, the
all powerful creator of the dunes, who, in a single
evening for a thousand ages are but an evening in
his calculations, could sweep them away, or sweep up another
(22:53):
area of sand and marim grass. As big one church
is already obliterated. That was yesterday to morrow. Maybe the
village further inland will have vanished too. This is the
secret of the fascination of the dunes. Superficially all seems
dead and dull. Reflection brings the deeper understanding of myriad
(23:16):
forms of life, creeping, running, springing, burrowing, of noisy, screaming,
struggling life dominated by the august secular movements of the
great Sea. Sometimes towards the end of the afternoon, I
would grow tired. The brilliant would become garish, Then leaving
(23:41):
the time, the eyebright, the wild pansies, the vipers, bergloss
and clusters an occasional teasel. After boxing every sort of
insect and every sort of plant that I had not
collected before the birds exert long ago swept into my cabinet,
I would hurry out to the shore, take off my clothes,
(24:01):
and be rebaptized by the sea. A hundred yards run
up the cool sands and back, and I was dry
and dallied a while in the sand hills before putting
on my shirt that smelled of stale sweat. It was
so good to divest myself of particularities that clung like
(24:22):
the burrs and my stockingness, and plunge into the universality
of the sea sub consciously. That was my motive and
the cause of my delight. April sixteenth, nineteen nineteen. I
am still miserable, especially on ease account that dear brave woman,
(24:46):
but I have undergone a change. My whole soul is
sweetened by the love of those near and dear to me,
by the sympathy of those reading my book. April twenty first,
nineteen nineteen. Nurse was cutting my beard and handed me
the mirror to report progress. The right mustache, I said, critically,
(25:12):
seems to droop down a lot. She twisted up the
left between finger and thumb, and then, in a flash,
before I had time to scream, damped her finger with
her tongue and gave a powerful screw to the right.
The end or section seven of A Last Diary by W. N. P.
(25:37):
Barbellion
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