W. N. P. Barbellion’s diary, 1910

Better, but still very dicky: a pallid animal: a weevil in a nut. I have a weak heart, an enervated nervous system; I suffer from lack of funds with which to carry…

Reading Hardy's novels. He is altogether delightful in the subtlety with which he lets you perceive the first tiny love presentiments between his heroes and…

For days past have been living in a state of mental ebullition. All kinds of pictures of Love, Life, and Death have been passing through my mind. Now I am too…

Still visit Dr. ----'s surgery each week. I have two dull spots at the bottom of each lung. What a fine expressive word is gloom. Let me write it: GLOOM.... One…

The facts are undeniable: Life is pain. No sophistry can win me over to any other view. And yet years ago I set out so hopefully and healthfully--what are birds'…

Had a letter from the Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum, advising me of three vacancies in his Dept., and asking me if I would like to try, etc.... So that…

... How delicious all this seemed! To be alive--thinking, seeing, enjoying, walking, eating--all quite apart from the amount of money in your purse or the prospects…

Up to now my life has been one of great internal strife and struggle--the struggle with a great ambition and a weak will--unequal to the task of coping with it. I…

Legginess is bad enough in a woman, but bandy legginess is impossible. Solitude is good for the soul. After an hour of it, I feel as lofty and imperial as Marcus…

My egoism appals me. Likewise the extreme intensification of the consciousness of myself. Whenever I walk down the High Street on a market day, my…

We sang to-night in Church, "But when I know Thee as Thou art, I'll praise Thee as I ought." Exactly! Till then, farewell. We are a great little people, we humans.…

Our Simian Ancestry How I hate the man who talks about the "brute creation," with an ugly emphasis on brute. Only Christians are capable of it. As for me, I am…

I do not ever like going to bed. For me each day ends in a little sorrow. I hate the time when it comes to put my books away, to knock out my pipe and say…

Spent the afternoon and evening till ten in the woods with Mary ----. Had tea in the Haunted House, and after sat in the Green Arbor until dark, when I kissed her.…

I hope to goodness she doesn't think I want to marry her. In the Park in the dark, kissing her. I was testing and experimenting with a new experience.

Last evening, after much mellifluous cajolery, induced her to kiss me. My private opinion about this whole affair is that all the time I have been at least twenty…

Read Thomas à Kempis in the train. It made me so angry I nearly flung it out of the window. "Meddle not with things that be too deep for thee," he says, "but read…

A puzzling afternoon: weather perfect, the earth green and humming like a top, yet a web of dream overlaid the great hill, and at certain moments, which recurred in…

Sat at the Civil Service Commission in Burlington House for the exam, for the vacancy in the B.M. No luck at all with the papers. The whole of my nine months'…

Returned home from London. Felt horribly defeated in crossing the threshold. It was so obviously returning after an unsuccessful flight.

Dissected a Squilla for which I paid 2s. 6d. to the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

Ambition Am attempting to feel after some practical philosophy of living--something that will enable me to accept disappointment with equanimity and Town Council…

In the morning a Town Council and in the afternoon a Rural Council. With this abominable trash in my notebook waiting to be written up and turned into "copy," and…

The nose-snuffling, cynical man who studies La Rochefoucauld, and prides himself on a knowledge of human motives, is pleased to point out that every action and…

The result arrived. As I thought, I have failed, being fourth with only three vacancies.

It is useless to bewail the course of fortune. It cannot be much credit to possess--though we may covet--those precious things, to possess which depends on…

Dined at the Devonshire Club in St. James's Street, W., with Dr. H----and Mr. ----, the latter showing the grave symptomatic phenomena of a monocle and spats. A…

Returned home and found a letter awaiting me from Dr. A---- offering me £60 a year for a temporary job as assistant at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory. Left London…

A purulent cold in the nose. My heart is weak. Palpitation after the least exertion. But I shall soon be swinging my cudgels in the battle of life, so it won't do…

Struggling in the depths again within the past few days with heart attacks. Am slowly getting better of them and trying to forget as soon as may be visions of…

Death At first, when we are very young, Death arouses our curiosity, as it did Cain in the beginning. It is a strange and very rare phenomenon which we cannot…

Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face--even my own--become…

He is a trifle better. It is fifteen years since he had the first paralytic stroke. Am taking over all his work and have written at once resigning the Plymouth…

It really did require an effort to go upstairs to-day to his bedroom and say cheerfully I was not going to P. after all, and that the matter was of no consequence…

Windy Ash With the dog for a walk around Windy Ash. It was a beautiful winter's morning--a low sun giving out a pale light but no warmth--a luminant, not a…