The Journal of a Disappointed Man Part 19

I got off quickly and swopped horses with A----.

Walked him most of the way, while A---- cantered forward and back to cheer me on. Ultimately however this beast, too, got sick of walking and began to trot. For a time I stood this well and began to rise in my saddle quite nicely. After two miles, horrible soreness supervened, and I had to get off--very carefully, with a funny feeling in my legs--even looked down at them to a.s.sure myself they were not bandy! In doing so, the horse--this traction monster--stepped on my toe and I swore.

On nearing the village, L---- arrived, riding A----'s animal and holding his sides for laughing at me as I crawled along holding the carthorse by the bridle. Got on again and rode into the Rectory grounds in fine style like a dashing cavalier, every one jeering at me from the lawn.

_September_ 28.

Having lived on this planet now for the s.p.a.ce of 24 years, I can claim with some cogency that I am qualified to express some sort of opinion about it. I therefore hereby record that I find myself in an absorbingly interesting place where I live, move and have my being, dominated by one monstrous feature above all others--the mystery of it all! Everything is so astonishing, my own existence so incredible!

Nothing explains itself. Every one is dumb. It is like walking about at a masqued Ball.... Even I myself am a mystery to me. How wonderful and frightening that is--to feel yourself--your innermost and most substantial possession to be a mystery, incomprehensible. I look at myself in the mirror and mock at myself. On some days I am to myself as strange and unfamiliar as a Pterodactyl. There is a certain grim humour in finding myself here possessed of a perfectly arbitrary arrangement of lineaments when I never asked to be here and never selected my own attributes. To the dignity of a human being it seems like a coa.r.s.e practical joke.... My own freakish physique is certainly a joke.

_October_ 4.

_In London Again_

K---- comes in from her dancing cla.s.s, nods to me, hugs her sister around the neck and says,--

"Oh! you dear thing, you've got a cold."

"I shouldn't do that," I remark, green-eyed, "she's in an awful wax to-night."

She: "Oh! I don't mind K----!"

(Laughter!)

_October_ 8.

Heard a knock at the door last night, and, thinking it was R----, I unbolted it and let in a tramp who at once asked G.o.d to bless me and crown all my sorrow with joy. An amiable fellow to be sure--so I gave him some coppers and he at once repeated with wonderful fervour, "G.o.d bless you, sir."

"I wish He would," I answered, "I have a horrible cold."

"Ah, I know, I gets it myself and the hinfluenza--have you had that, sir?"

In ten minutes I should have told him all my personal history. But he was thirsting for a drink and went off quickly and left me with my heart unburthened. London is a lonely place.

To-day journeyed to--where I gave evidence as an _expert_ in Economic Entomology at the County Court in a case concerning damage to furniture by mites for which I am paid 8 8s. fee and expenses and travelled first cla.s.s. What irony! (See June 30, 1911.)

_October_ 11.

I may be a weak, maundering, vacillating fool but I cannot help loving her on one day, being indifferent the next and on some occasions even disliking her.... To-day she was charming, with a certain warm glossy perfection on her face and hair.... And she loves me--I could swear it.

"And when a woman woos ..." etc. How difficult for a vain and lonely man to resist her. She tells me many times in many dainty ways that she loves me without so much as stopping her work to talk.

I wish I were permanently and irresistibly enamoured. I want a _boulevers.e.m.e.nt_....

_October_ 13.

Went to see a Harley Street oculist about the sight of one eye, which has caused a lot of trouble and worry of late and continuously haunted me with the possibility of blindness. At times, I see men as trees walking and print becomes hopelessly blurred.

The Specialist however is rea.s.suring. The eye is healthy --no neuritis--but the adjustment muscles have been thrown out of gear by the nervous troubles of last spring.

Was ever man more sorely tempted? Here am I lonely and uncomfortable in diggings with a heart like nascent oxygen.... Shall I? Yes, but.... And I have neither health nor wealth.

_October_ 22.

_The British Museum Reading Room_

I saw it for the first time to-day! Gadzooks!! This is the only fit e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n to express my amazement! It's a pagan temple with the G.o.ds in the middle and all around, various obscure dark figures prostrating themselves in worship.

For any one who is not simply a Sheep or Cow or whose nervous organisation is a degree more sensitive than the village blacksmith's, it is a besetting peril to his peace of mind to be constantly moving about an independent being, with loves and hates, and a separate ident.i.ty among other separate ident.i.ties, who prowl and prowl around like the hosts of Midian--ready to snarl, fight, seize you, bore you, exasperate you, to arouse all your pa.s.sions, call up all the worst from the depths where they have lain hidden.... A day spent among my fellows goads me to a frenzy by the evening. I am no longer fit for human companionship. People string me up to concert pitch. I develop suspicions of one that he is prying, of another that he patronises.

Others make me horribly anxious to stand well in their eyes and horribly curious to know what they think of me. Others I hate and loathe--for no particular reason. There is a man I am acquainted with concerning whom I know nothing at all. He may be Jew, Gentile, Socinian, Pre-adamite, Anabaptist, Rosicrucian--I don't know, and I don't care, for I hate him.

I should like to smash his face in. I don't know why.... In the whole course of our tenuous acquaintance we have spoken scarce a dozen words to each other. Yet I should like to blow up his face with dynamite. If I had 200 a year private income I should be in wait for him to-morrow round a corner and land him one--just to indicate my economic independence. He would call for the police and the policeman--discerning creature--on arrival, would surely say, "With a face like that, I'm not surprised."

R---- said to me this morning, "Well, have you heard?" with an exuberance of curiosity that made my blood boil--he was referring to my Essay still at the bar of the opinion of the Editor of the _English Review_. "You beast," I snapped and walked off.

R---- shouted with laughter for he realizes my anger with him is only semi-serious: it is meant and not meant: meant, for it is justified by the facts; not meant, for I can't be too serious over anything _au fond_.

Of all the grim and ridiculous odds and ends of chance that Fortune has rolled up to my feet, my friendship with a man like B---- is the grimmest and most ridiculous. He is a bachelor of sixty, rather good-looking, of powerful physique and a faultless const.i.tution.... His ignorance is colossal and he once asked whether Australia, for example, tho' surrounded by water, is not connected up with other land underneath the sea. Being himself a child in intelligence (tho' commercially cunning), he has a great respect for my brains. Being himself a strong man, he views my ill-health with much contempt. His private opinion is that I am in consumption. When asked once by a lady if I were not going to be "a great man" one day, he replied, "Yes--if he lives." I ought to walk six miles a day, drink a bottle of stout with my dinner, and eat plenty of _onions_. His belief in the curative properties of onions is strong as death....

His system of prophylaxis may be quickly summarised,--

(1) Hot whisky _ad lib_. and off to bed.

(2) A woman.

These two sterling preventives he has often urged upon me at the same time tipping out a quant.i.ty of anathemas on doctors and physic....

He is a cynic. He scoffs at the medical profession, the Law, the Church, the Press. Every man is guilty until he is proved innocent. The Premier is an unscrupulous character, the Bishop a salacious humbug. No doctor will cure, for it pays him to keep you ill. Every clergyman puts the Sunday-school teacher in the family way. His mouth is permanently distorted by cynicism.

He is vain and believes all women are in love with him. When playing the Gallant, he turns on a special voice, wears white spats, and looks like a Newmarket "Crook."

"I lost my 'bus," a girl says to him. "Lost your bust," he answers, in broad Scotch. "I can't see that you've done that." ... His s.e.xual career has been a remarkable one, he claiming to have brought many women to bed, and actually to have lain with women of almost all European nationalities, for he has been a great traveller....

This man is my devoted friend!... And truth to tell I get on with him better than I do with most people. I like his gamey flavour, his utter absence of self-consciousness, and his doggy loyalty to myself--his weaker brother. He may be depraved in his habits, coa.r.s.e in his language, boorish in his manners, ludicrous in the wrongness of all his views. But I like him just because he is so hopeless. I get on with him because it is so impossible to reclaim him--my missionary spirit is not intrigued. If he only dabbled in vice (for an experiment), if he had pale, watery ideas about current literature--if--to use his own favourite epithet--he were _genteel_, I should quarrel.

_October_ 30.

Having developed a pa.s.sion for a piece of sculpture by R. Boeltzig called the Reifenwerferin--the most beautiful figure of a woman. I am already devoted to Rodin's "Kiss" and have a photo of it framed in my bedroom. Have written to Bruciani's.

I suspect that my growing appreciation of the plastic art is with me only distilled sensuality. I enjoy my morning bath for the same reason.

My bath is a daily baptism. I revel in the pleasure of the pain of the cold water. I whistle gleefully because I am clean and cool and nude early in the morning with the sun still low, before the day has been stained by clothes, dirt, pain, exasperation, death.... How I love myself as I rub myself down!--the cool, pink skin--I could eat it! I want to be all day in a cold bath to enjoy the pain of mortifying the flesh--it is so beautiful, so soft, so inscrutabl--if I cut out chunks of it, it would only bleed.

_November_ 8.