This Box Contains Manuscripts
My sticky notes from Journal of a Disappointed Man, by WNP Barbellion:
From HG Wells' introduction:
Your egoist, like the solitary beasts, lives only for himself; your altruist declares that he lives only for others; for either there may be success or failure, but for neither can there be tragedy.
Barbellion on the sublime and ridiculous nature of diaries:
September 8. Wet all day. Toothache.
September 9. Toothache
September 10. Toothache
September 11. Toothache
October 16. Dissected an eel.
January 13. [...] This reads like Isaac Walton's funny mixtures of the sublime with the ridiculous. He discusses abstract happiness and the best salmon sauce all in one breath.
On solitude:
Solitude is good for the soul. After an hour of it, I feel as lofty and imperial as Marcus Aurelius.
On death:
What embitters me is the humiliation of having to die, to have to be pouring out the precious juices of my life into the dull Earth, to be no longer conscious of what goes on, no longer moving abroad upon the Earth creating attraction and repulsions, pouring out one's ego in a stream. To think that the women I have loved will be marrying and forget, and that the men I have hated will continue on their way and forget I ever hated them—the ignominy of being dead! What voluble talker likes his mouth to be stopped with earth, who relishes the idea of the carrion worm mining in the seat of the intellect?
On creative trifles during historic times:
How may I excuse myself for continuing to talk about my affairs and for continuing to write zoological memoirs during the greatest War of all time? Well, here are some precedents: Goethe sat down to study the geography of China, while his fatherland agonised at Leipsig. Hegel wrote the last lines of the Phenomenology of Spirit within sound of the guns of Jena. While England was being rent in twain by civil war, Sir Thomas Browne, ensconced in old Norwich, reflected on Cambyses and Pharaoh and on the song the Sirens sang. Lacépède composed his Histoire des Poissons during the French Revolution. Then there were Diogenes and Archimedes.
On the survival (or otherwise of diaries):
"This Box contains Manuscripts. 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—nobody 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 brass 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.
And again, several days later:
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 brass 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 God's good time I intend getting a volume ready for publication.
On the idle life:
February 28. What a boon is Sunday! I can get out of bed just when the spirit moves me, dress and bath leisurely, even with punctilio. How nice to dawdle in the bath with a cigarette, to hear the holiday sound of Church bells! Then comes that supreme moment when, shaven, clean, warm and hungry for breakfast and coffee, I stand a moment before the looking-glass and comb out my towzled hair with a parting as straight as a line in Euclid. That gives the finishing touch of self-satisfaction, and I go down to breakfast ready for the day's pleasure. I hate this weekday strain of having to be always each day at a set time in a certain place.
On literary truth:
James Joyce is my man (in the Portrait of the Artist as a Young man). He is a writer who tells the truth about himself. It is almost impossible to tell the truth.
On the qualities of his own record (noted in Last Diary):
March 10.
Analysis of the ‘Journal of a Disappointed Man’
- Ambition.
- Reflections on Death.
- Intellectual Curiosity.
- Self Consciousness.
- Self Introspection.
- Zest of Living.
I wonder if any reviewer will bring out these points:
- Humour.
- 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 of a self-investigator.
On his own reviews and the death of a pseudonym:
If I live to read the review notices, I shall probably criticise them. I shall be criticising 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. There will be a newspaper discussion: Is Barbellion 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.—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.’
Or,
‘DEAR SIR,
‘I should be glad if you would correct the impression generated by one of your correspondents that Barbellion is the name of an evil spirit appearing on Walpurgis night. As a matter of fact, my forbears were simple folk — tallow chandlers in B——.’
On validating a text:
March 18. Mother (she liked me to call her Moth. Hubbard, Lepidopterous Hubbard, and she used to sign her letters Hubbard) had a pretty custom, which she hated anyone to detect, of putting every letter she wrote to us when stamped, directed and sealed, into her Bible for a minute or two, ostensibly to sanctify the sealing up.