The Journal of a Disappointed Man Part 7

_February_ 11.

Walked in the country. Coming home, terrified by a really violent attack of palpitation. Almost every one I met I thought would be the unfortunate person who would have to pick me up. As each one in the street approached me, I weighed him in the balance and considered if he had presence of mind and how he would render first aid. After my friend, P.C. ----, had pa.s.sed, I felt sorry that the tragedy had not already happened, for he knows me and where I live. At length, after sundry leanings over the river wall, arrived at the Library, which I entered, and sat down, when the full force of the palpitation was immediately felt. My face burned with the hot blood, my hand holding the paper shook with the angry pulse, and my heart went bang! bang! bang! and I could feel its beat in the carotids of the neck and up along the Torcular herophili and big vessels in the occipital region of the head. Drew in each breath very gently for fear of aggravating the fiend. Got home (don't know how) and had some sal volatile. Am better now but very demoralised.

_February_ 13.

Feel like a piece of drawn threadwork, or an undeveloped negative, or a jelly fish on stilts, or a sloppy tadpole, or a weevil in a nut, or a spitchc.o.c.ked eel. In other words and in short--ill.

_February_ 16.

After some days with the vision of sudden death constantly before me, have come to the conclusion that it's a long way to go to die. Am coming back anyhow. Yet these are a few terrible pages in my history.

_March_ 4.

... The Doctor's orders "Cease Work" have brought on in an aggravated form my infatuation for zoological research. I lie in bed and manufacture rolling periods in praise of it, I get dithyrambic over the zoologists themselves--Huxley, Wallace, Brooks, Lankester. I chortle to reflect that in zoology there are no stock exchange ambitions, there is no mention of slum life, Tariff Reform is not included. In the repose of the s.p.a.cious laboratory by the seaside or in the halls of some great Museum, life with its vulgar struggles, its hustle and obscenity, scarcely penetrates. Behind those doors, life flows slowly, deeply. I am ascetic and long for the monastic seclusion of a student's life.

_March_ 5.

_From One Maiden Lady to Another_. (_Authentic_)

"My dear Sister,--You have been expecting to hear from me I know, I have had inflammation to my eyes twice in 3 weeks so I thought I had better let the Doctor see and he says it is catarrh of the eyes and windpipe. I am inhaling and taking lozenges and medicine. You will be sorry to learn Leonora Mims has been taken to a Sanatorium with Diptheria, we heard yesterday, she is better, poor Mrs. Mims herself quite an invalid, she has to walk with a stick, I believe you know she has had to have her breast cut off, they keep a servant as she can't do anything, old Mrs.

Point is 87 I think it is so they too have a lot of trouble, Fred Mims has just got married....

"Poor old Mrs. Seemsoe is just the same, she doesn't know anybody but she talks, the nurse put a grape in her mouth but she didn't know what to do with it, I think it is very sad. She was taken about a fortnight before Easter. Will you tell me dear if this is right receipt for clothes 1/2 oz. carbolic in 1/2 pint of rose water. Harry Gammon's 2 little children have measles, poor Maisie has gone with her Aunt Susan, poor old Joe Gammon they say had very little to leave, we don't know where Robert gets his money from. I dare say you saw that Tom Sagg has married another of Ned Smith's daughters and we hear these Smith girls are rare housekeepers and this girl that has married Tom Sagg has made all her own linen. Mrs. Wilkins, the butcher's wife is going to have a little one after 15 years, our Vicar has been laid up with an abscess, he told us about his brother the other day, he says as brothers they love each other very much. We have 3 very sad cases of men ill in the village. We had 4 but one man died of cancer.

"Yr loving Sister Amy."

Voila!

_March_ 7.

If I die I should like to be buried in the cherry orchards at V----.

How the beastly mob loves a tragedy! The sudden death of the Bank Manager is simply thrilling the town, and the newspapers sell like hot cakes. Scarcely before the body is cold the coincidence of his death on the anniversary of his birth is discussed in every household; every one tells everybody else where they saw him last "he looked all right then."

The policeman and the housemaid, the Mayor and the Town Clerk, the cabman and the billposter, stand and discuss the deceased gentleman's last words or what the widow's left with. "Ah! well, it is very sad,"

they remark to one another with no emotion and continue on their way.

_March_ 10.

On coming downstairs in the evening played Ludo with H----. At one stage I laughed so much in conjunction with that harlequin H---- that I got cramp in the abdominal muscles and the tears trickled down my face.

_March_ 13.

H---- and I play Ludo incessantly. We've developed the gambling fever, and our pent-up excitement every now and then explodes in fiendish cackles, and Mother looks up over her spectacles and says, "William, William, they'll hear in the street presently."

_A Character_

For this world's unfortunates, his is the ripe sympathy of a well-developed nature, standing in strong contrast with the rest of his personality, which is wholly self-centred, a little ungenerous, and what strong men of impeccable character call "weak." If you are ill he is delightful, if you are robust or successful he can be very objectionable. To an influenza victim he goes out of his way to carry a book, but if you tell him with gusto you have pa.s.sed your exam, he says, "Oh, but there's not much behind it, is there?" "Oh! no," I answer, comforting him, "it is really a misfortune to be a success." And so only the bankrupts, dipsos (as he calls them), ne'er-do-weels, and sudden deaths ever touch his heart or tap his sympathy. He is a short, queery, dressy little fellow, always spruce and clean. His joy consists in a gla.s.s of beer, a full stomach, a good cigar, or a pretty girl to flirt with. He frequents drinking saloons and billiard rooms, goes to dances and likes to be thought a lady's man. "Urn," he will say, with the air of a connoisseur, "a little too broad in the beam," as some attractive damsel walks down the street. Any day about twelve you can see both of us, "the long and the short of it" (he is only half my height and I call him .5), walking together in the Park, and engaged in the most heated discussion over some entirely trivial matter, such as whether he would marry a woman with sore eyes, etc., etc. More than once we have caught cabmen idle on the cab-rank or policemen on point duty jerking their thumbs backward at us and expressing some facetious remarks which we longed to overhear. I usually walk in the gutter to bring my height down a bit.

A good raconteur himself, he does not willingly suffer a story from another. The varmint on occasion finishes your joke off for you, which is his delicate way of intimating that he has heard it before. He is a first-cla.s.s mimic, and sends every one into a thousand fits while he gives you in succession the Mayor and all the Corporation He also delights me at times by mimicking me. His mind is receptive rather than creative: it picks up all sorts of gaudy ideas by the wayside like a magpie, and I sometimes enjoy the exquisite sensation of hearing some of these petty pilferings (which he has filched from me) laid at my feet as if they were his own. The ideas which are his own are always unmistakable.

His favourite poems are Omar and the Ballad of Reading Jail, his favourite drinks Medoc or a Cherry Mixture. Me he describes as _serpentilous_ with _Gibbon-like arms,_ pinheaded, and so on. He amuses me. In fact I love him.

_March_ 16.

No one will ever understand without personal experience that an exceedingly self-conscious creature like myself driven in on himself to consume himself is the unhappiest of men. I have come to loathe myself: my finicking, hypersensitive, morbid nature, always thinking, talking, writing about myself for all the world as if the world beyond did not exist! I am rings within rings, circles concentric and intersecting, a maze, a tangle: watching myself behave or misbehave, always reflecting on what impression I am making on others or what they think of me.

Introduce me to a stranger and I swell out as big as Alice.

Self-consciousness makes me pneumatic, and consequently so awkward and clumsy and swollen that I don't know how to converse--and G.o.d help the other fellow.

_Later_: Youth is an intoxication without wine, some one says. Life is an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who, disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his throat. If this be so, I want to be very drunk. The great thing is to live, to clutch at our existence and race away with it in some great and enthralling pursuit. Above all, I must beware of all ultimate questions--they are too maddeningly unanswerable--let me eschew philosophy and burn Omar.

In this week's _T.P.'s Weekly_ a youth advertises:--"Young thinkers interested in philosophy, religion, social reform, the future of humanity, and all freethought, please communicate with 'Evolution,' aged 21!" All right for 21.

_Later_: I have in mind some work on the vascular system of larval newts. In the autumn I see a large piece of work to be done in animal psychology--namely, frequency of stimulus and its relation to habit formation. Yet the doctor advises long rest and the office work remains to be done. I must hack my way through somehow. I sit trying to disentangle these knots; then some one plays a dreamy waltz and all my fine edifices of the will vanish in mist. Is it worth while? Why not float with the tide? But I soon throw off these temptations. If I live, I shall play a fine game! I am determined. A lame-dog life is of no use.

_April_ 17.

_Railway Travel_

A journey in a railway train makes me sentimental. If I enter the compartment a robust-minded, cheerful youth, fresh and whistling from a walk by the sea, yet, as soon as I am settled down in one corner and the train is rattling along past fields, woods, towns, and painted stations, I find myself indulging in a saccharine sadness--very toothsome and jolly. I pull a long face and gaze out of the window wistfully and look sad. But I am really happy--and incredibly sentimental.

The effect is produced, I suppose, by the quickly changing panoramic view of the country, and as I see everything sliding swiftly by, and feel myself being hurtled forward w.i.l.l.y-nilly, I am sub-conscious of the flight of Time, of the eternal flux, of the trajectory of my own life.... Timid folk, of course, want some Rock of Ages, something static. They want life a mill pond rather than the torrent which it is, a homely affair of teacups and tabby cats rather than a dangerous expedition.

_April_ 22.

Who will rid me of the body of this death? My body is chained to me--a dead weight. It is my warder. I can do nothing without first consulting it and seeking its permission. I jeer at its grotesqueness. I chafe at the thongs it binds on me. On this bully I am dependent for everything the world can give me. How can I preserve my _amour propre_ when I must needs be for ever wheedling and cajoling a despot with delicate meats and soft couches?--I who am proud, ambitious, and full of energy! In the end, too, I know it intends to carry me off.... I should like though to have the last kick and, copying De Quincey, arrange to hand it over for dissection to the medical men--out of revenge.

"Hope thou not much; fear thou not at all"--my motto of late.

_April_ 30.

I can well imagine looking back on these entries later on and blus.h.i.+ng at the pettiness of my soul herein revealed.... Only be charitable, kind reader. There are three Johns, and I am much mistaken if in these pages there will not be found something of the John known to himself, and an inkling, perhaps, of the man as he is known to his Creator. As a timid showman afraid that unless he emphasises the feature of his exhibit, they will be overlooked, let me, hat in hand, point out that I know I am an a.s.s, that I am still hoping (in spite of ill health) that I am an enthusiast.

_May_ 2.

Maeterlinck's _Wisdom and Destiny_ is distilled Marcus Aurelius. I am rather tired of these comfortable philosophers. If a man be hara.s.sed by Fate with a red rag and a picador let him turn and rend him--or try to, anyway.

_May_ 8.

_Staying by the Sea_

I have been living out of doors a lot lately and am getting sunburnt. It gives me infinite pleasure to be sunburnt--to appear the man of the open air, the open road, and the wild life. The sun intoxicates me to-day.

The sea is not big enough to hold me nor the sky for me to breathe in. I feel I should like to be swaying with all the pa.s.sions, throbbing with life and a vast activity of heart and sinew--to live magnificently--with an unquenchable thirst to drink to the lees, to plumb the depth of every joy and every sorrow, to see my life flash in the heat. Ah! Youth!

Youth! Youth!!! In these moments of ecstasy my happiness is torrential.

I have the soul of the poppy flaming in me then. I am rather like the poppy in many ways.... It is peculiarly appropriate. It must be my flower! I am the poppy!!

_May_ 9.

L---- was digging up the ground in his garden to-day and one shovelful came up thick and shapely. He laid the sod on its back gently without breaking it and said simply, "Doesn't it come up nice?" His face was radiant!--Real happiness lies in the little things, in a bit of garden work, in the rattle of the teacups in the next room, in the last chapter of a book.