"That"s a dominant fifth," I said to him the other day; no answer.
"You ignorant devil," I said, "you don"t know what a dominant fifth is!"
We made grimaces at one another.
"Who"s the Master of the Mint?" I asked him. "That is an easy one."
"The Chancellor of the Exchequer," was the prompt reply.
"Oh! that"s right," I said sarcastic and crestfallen. "Now tell me the shortest verse in the Bible and the date of Rameses II."
We laughed. R---- is a very clever man and the most extroardinarily versatile man I know. He is bound to make his mark. His danger is--too many irons in the fire. Here are some of his occupations and acquirements: Art (etching, drypoint, water-colours), music (a charming voice), cla.s.sics, French, German, Italian (both speaking and reading knowledge), biology, etc., etc. He is for ever t.i.tillating his mind with some new thing. "For G.o.d"s sake, do leave it alone--you simply rag your mind to death. Put it out to gra.s.s--go thro" an annual season of complete abstinence from knowledge--an intellectual Lent."
No one more than he enjoys my ragging him like this--and I do it rather well.
[1] "I could eat all the elephants of Hindustan and pick my teeth with the Spire of Stra.s.sburg Cathedral."
[2] See January 2nd, 1915.
1915
_January_ 1.
I have grown so ridiculously hypercritical and fastidious that I will refuse a man"s invitation to dinner because he has watery blue eyes, or hate him for a mannerism or an impediment or affectation in his speech.
Some poor devil who has not heard of Turner or Debussy or Dostoieffsky I gird at with the arrogance of a knowledgeable youth of 17. Some oddity who should afford a sane mind endless amus.e.m.e.nt, I write off as a _Insus naturae_ and dismiss with a flourish of contempt. My intellectual arrogance--excepting at such times as I become conscious of it and pull myself up--is incredible. It is incredible because I have no personal courage and all this pride boils up behind a timid exterior. I quail often before stupid but over-bearing persons who consequently never realise my contempt of them. Then afterwards, I writhe to think I never stood up to this fool; never uttered an appropriate word to interfere with another"s nauseating self-love. It exasperates me to be unable to give a Roland for an Oliver--even servants and underlings "tick me off"--to fail always in sufficient presence of mind to make the satisfying rejoinder or riposte. I suffer from such a savage _amour propre_ that I fear to enter the lists with a man I dislike on account of the mental anguish I should suffer if he worsted me. I am therefore bottled up tight--both my hates and loves. For a coward is not only afraid to tell a man he hates him, but is nervous too of letting go of his feeling of affection or regard lest it be rejected or not returned.
I shudder to think of such remarks as (referring to me), "He"s one of my admirers, you know" (sardonically), or, "I simply can"t get rid of him."
If however my cork _does_ come out, there is an explosion, and placid people occasionally marvel to hear violent language streaming from my lips and nasty acid and facetious remarks.
Of course, to intimate friends (only about three persons in the wide, wide world), I can always give free vent to my feelings, and I do so in privacy with that violence in which a weak character usually finds some compensation for his intolerable self-imposed reserve and restraint in public. I can never marvel enough at the ineradicable turpitude of my existence, at my _double-facedness_, and the remarkable contrast between the face I turn to the outside world and the face my friends know. It"s like leading a double existence or artificially constructing a puppet to dangle before the crowd while I fulminate behind the scenes. If only I had the moral courage to play my part in life--to take the stage and be myself, to enjoy the delightful sensation of making my presence felt, instead of this vapourish mumming--then this Journal would be quite unnecessary. For to me self-expression is a necessity of life, and what cannot be expressed one way must be expressed in another. When colossal egotism is driven underground, whether by a steely surface environment or an unworkable temperament or as in my case by both, you get a truly remarkable result, and the victim a truly remarkable pain--the pain one might say of continuously unsuccessful attempts at parturition.
It is perhaps not the whole explanation to say that my milky affability before, say bores or clods is sheer personal cowardice.... It is partly real affability. I am so glad to have opposite me some one who is making himself pleasant and affable and sympathetic that I forget for the moment that he is an unconscionable time-server, a sycophant, lick-spittle, toady, etc. My first impulse is always to credit folk with being nicer, cleverer, more honest and amiable than they are. Then, on reflection, I discover unpleasing characteristics, I detect their little motives, and hate myself for not speaking. The fellow is intolerable, why did I not tell him so? Bitter recriminations from my critical self upon my flabby amiable half.
On the whole, then, I lead a pretty disgraceful inner life--excepting when I pull myself together and smile benignly on all things with a philosophical smugness, such as is by no means my mood at this present moment. I am so envious that a reprint of one of Romney"s Ramus girls sends me into a dry tearless anger--for the moment till I turn over the next page.... Inwardly I was exacerbated this morning when R---- recited, "Come and have a tiddle at the old Brown Bear," and explained how a charming "young person" sang this at breakfast the other morning.
It was simply _too_ charming for him to hear.
To-night as I brushed my hair, I decided I was quite good-looking, and _I believe_ I mused that E---- was really a lucky girl.... All that is the matter with me is a colossal conceit and a colossal discontent, qualities exaggerated where a man finds himself in an environment which ....
You observant people will notice that this explanation is something of a self-defence whereby the virtue goes out of my confession. I plead guilty, but great and unprecedented provocation as well. Intense pride of individuality forbids that I should ever be other than, shall I say, amiably disposed towards myself _au fond_, however displeased I may be with my environment. It is indeed impossible without sending him to a lunatic asylum ever to knock a man off the balance of his self-esteem.... A man"s loyalty to himself is the most pig-headed thing imaginable.
_January_ 2.
_The Fire Bogey_
"This Box contains Ma.n.u.scripts. One guinea will be paid to any one who in case of danger from fire saves it from damage or loss."
Signed: W.N.P. BARBELLION.
I have had this printed in large black characters on a card, framed and nailed to my "coffin" of Journals. I told the printer first to say _Two Guineas_, but he suggested that One Guinea was quite enough. I agreed but wondered how the devil _he_ knew what the Journals were worth--n.o.body knows.
Next month, I expect I shall have a "hand" painted on the wall and pointing towards the box. And the month after that I shall hire a fireman to be on duty night and day standing outside No. 101 in a bra.s.s helmet and his hatchet up at the salute.
These precious Journals! Supposing I lost them! I cannot imagine the anguish it would cause me. It would be the death of my real self and as I should take no pleasure in the perpetuation of my flabby, flaccid, anaemic, amiable puppet-self, I should probably commit suicide.
_August_ 7.
Harvey who discovered the circulation of the blood also conducted a great many investigations into the Anatomy and development of insects.
But all his MSS. and drawings disappeared in the fortunes of war, and one half of his life work thus disappeared. This makes me feverish, living as I do in Armageddon!
Again, all Malpighi"s pictures, furniture, books and MSS. were destroyed in a lamentable fire at his house in Bononia, occasioned it is said by the negligence of his old wife.
About 1618, Ben Jonson suffered a similar calamity thro" a fire breaking out in his study. Many unpublished MSS. perished.
A more modern and more tragic example I found recently in the person of an Australian naturalist, Dr. Walter Stimpson, who lost all his MSS., drawings, and collections in the great fire of Chicago, and was so excoriated by this irreparable misfortune that he never recovered from the shock, and died the following year a broken man and unknown.
Of course the housemaid who lit the fire with the _French Revolution_ is known to all, as well as Newton"s "Fido, Fido, you little know what you have done."
There are many dangers in preserving the labours of years in MS. form.
Samuel Butler (of _Erewhon_) advised writing in copying ink and then pressing off a second copy to be kept in another and separate locality.
My own precautions for these Journals are more elaborate. Those who know about it think I am mad. I wonder.... But I dare say I am a pathetic fool--an incredible self-deceiver!
Anyhow--the "coffin" of raw material I sent down to T---- while I retain the two current volumes. This is to avoid Zeppelins. E---- took the "coffin" down for me on her way home from school, and at Taunton, inquisitive porters mistaking it, I suppose, for an infant"s coffin carried it reverently outside the station and laid it down. She caught them looking at it just in time before her train left. Under her instructions they seized it by the bra.s.s handles and carried it back again. I sit now and with a good deal of curiosity fondle the idea of porters carrying about my Journals of confession. It"s like being tickled in the palm of the hand.... Two volumes of abstracted entries I keep here, and, as soon as I am married, I intend to make a second copy of these.... Then all in G.o.d"s good time I intend getting a volume ready for publication.
_January_ 30.
_Hearing Beethoven_
To the Queen"s Hall and heard Beethoven"s Fifth and Seventh Symphonies.
Before the concert began I was in a fever. I kept on saying to myself, "I am going to hear the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies." I regarded myself with the most ridiculous self-adulation--I smoothed and purred over myself--a great contented Tabby cat--and all because I was so splendidly fortunate as to be about to hear Beethoven"s Fifth and Seventh Symphonies.
It certainly upset me a little to find there were so many other people who were singularly fortunate as well, and it upset me still more to find some of them knitting and some reading newspapers as if they waited for sausage and mashed.
How I gloried in the Seventh! I can"t believe there was any one present who gloried in it as I did! To be processing majestically up the steps of a great, an unimaginable palace (in the "Staircase" introduction), led by Sir Henry, is to have had at least a crowded ten minutes of glorious life--a suspicion crossed the mind at one time "Good Heavens, they"re going to knight me." I cannot say if that were their intentions.
But I escaped however....
I love the way in which a beautiful melody flits around the Orchestra and its various components like a beautiful bird.
_January_ 19.
_An Average Day_