The Journal of a Disappointed Man Part 2

[Letter from Editor of _Countryside_ to my brother saying that if the _Countryside_ grew he might be able to offer me a billet. "Meanwhile he will be able to get along with his pen ... he will soon make a living and in time too a name."] This is a bit of all right. I shall always be on the look-out for a job on a N.H. Journal.

_December_ 7.

Went to F---- Duckponds. Flocks of Wigeon and Teal on the water. Taking advantage of a dip in the land managed to stalk them splendidly, and for quite a long time I lay among the long gra.s.s watching them through my field-gla.s.ses. But during the day Wild Duck are not particularly lively or interesting birds. They just rest serenely on the water like floating corks on a sheet of gla.s.s. Occasionally one will paddle around lazily.

But for the most part they show a great ennui and seem so sleepy and tired that one would almost think to be able to approach and feed them out of the hand. But I moved one hand carelessly and the whole flock was up in a minute and whizzing across the river. Afterwards, at dusk, on returning to the ponds, they had come back; but now that the sun was down, those dozy, flapdoodle creatures of the afternoon were transformed into quacking, quarrelsome, bl.u.s.tering birds that squabbled and chivvied each other, every moment seizing the chance of a luxurious dip, flinging the ice-cold water off their backs with a shake of the tail that seemed to indicate the keenest-edged delight.

It was now quite dark. A Snipe rose at my feet and disappeared into the darkness. Coots and Moorhens clekked, and a Little Grebe grew bold and began to dive and fish quite close to me, methodically working its way upstream and so quartering out its feeding area.

A happy half-hour! Alas! I enjoy these moments the more as they recede.

Not often do I realise the living present. That is always difficult. It is the mere shades--the ghosts of the dead days--that are dearest to me.

Spent my last day at school. De Quincey says (or was it Johnson?) that whenever we do anything for the last time, provided we have done it regularly for years before, we are a little melancholy, even though it has been distasteful to us.... True.

_December_ 14.

Signed my Death Warrant, _i.e._, my articles apprenticing me to journalism for five years. By Jove! I shall work frantically during the next five years so as to be ready at the end of them to take up a Natural History appointment.

[1] Up to 1911, the Journal is mainly devoted to records of observations in general Natural History and latterly in Zoology alone.

1907

_March_ 1.

As long as he has good health, a man need never despair. Without good health, I _might_ keep a long while in the race, yet as the goal of my ambition grew more and more unattainable I should surely remember the words of Keats and give up: "There is no fiercer h.e.l.l than the failure of a great ambition."

_March_ 14.

Have been reading through the Chemistry Course in the Harmsworth _Self-Educator_ and learning all the latest facts and ideas about radium. I would rather have a clear comprehension of the atom as a solar system than a private income of 100 a year. If only I had eyes to go on reading without a stop!

_May_ 1.

Met an old gentleman in E----, a naturalist with a great contempt for the Book of Genesis. He wanted to know how the Kangaroo leapt from Australia to Palestine and how Noah fed the animals in the Ark. He rejects the Old T. theogony and advised me to read "Darwin and J.G.

Wood!" Silly old man!

_May_ 22.

To Challacombe and then walked across Exmoor. This is the first time I have been on Exmoor. My first experience of the Moors came bursting in on me with a flood of ideas, impressions, and delights. I cannot write out the history of to-day. It would take too long and my mind is a palpitating tangle. I have so many things to record that I cannot record one of them. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to draw up an inventory of things seen and heard and trust to my memory to fill in the details when in the future I revert to this date. Too much joy, like too much pain, simply makes me prostrate. It wounds the organism. It is too much. I shall try to forget it all as quickly as possible so as to be able to return to egg-collecting and bird-watching the sooner as a calm and dispa.s.sionate observer. Yet these dear old hills. How I love them. I cannot leave them without one friendly word. I wish I were a shepherd!

At the "Ring of Bells" had a long yarn with the landlord, who, as he told us the story of his life, was constantly interrupted but never disconcerted by the exuberant loyalty and devotion of his wife--a stout, florid, creamy woman, who capped every story with: "Ees quite honest, sir; no 'arm at all in old Joshua."

_June_ 5.

A half-an-hour of to-day I spent in a punt under a copper beech out of the pouring rain listening to Lady ----'s gamekeeper at A---- talk about beasts and local politics--just after a visit of inspection to the Heronry in the firs on the island in the middle of the Lake. It was delightful to hear him describing a Heron killing an Eel with "a dap on the nidd.i.c.k," helping out the figure with a pat on the nape of his thick bull neck.

_July_ 22.

Am reading Huxley's _Crayfish_. H---- brought me in that magnificent aculeate _Chrysis ignita_.

_August_ 15.

Met _her_ in the market with M----. I just lifted my hat and pa.s.sed on.

She has the most marvellous brown eyes I have ever seen. She is perfectly self-possessed. A bad sign this.

_August_ 18.

When I feel ill, cinema pictures of the circ.u.mstances of my death flit across my mind's eye. I cannot prevent them. I consider the nature of the disease and all I said before I died--something heroic, of course!

_August_ 31.

She is a ripping girl. Her eyes are magnificent. I have never seen any one better looking.

_October_ 1.

In the afternoon dissected a Frog, following Milnes Marshall's Book. Am studying Chemistry and attending cla.s.ses at the Evening School and reading Physiology (Foster's). Am also teaching myself German. I wish I had a microscope.

_October_ 3.

What heaps of things to be done! How short the time to do them in! An appet.i.te for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appet.i.te if not curbed. I often stand in the centre of the Library here and think despairingly how impossible it is ever to become possessed of all the wealth of facts and ideas contained in the books surrounding me on every hand. I pull out one volume from its place and feel as if I were no more than giving one dig with a pick in an enormous quarry. The Porter spends his days in the Library keeping strict vigil over this catacomb of books, pa.s.sing along between the shelves and yet never paying heed to the almost audible susurrus of desire--the desire every book has to be taken down and read, to live, to come into being in somebody's mind. He even hands the volumes over the counter, seeks them out in their proper places or returns them there without once realising that a Book is a Person and not a Thing. It makes me shudder to think of Lamb's _Essays_ being carted about as if they were fardels.

_October_ 16.

Dissected an Eel. Ca.s.sell's _Natural History_ says the Air-bladder is divided. This is not so in the one I opened. Found what I believe to be the lymphatic heart in the tail beneath the vent.

1908

_March_ 10.

Am working frantically so as to keep up my own work with the daily business of reporting. Shorthand, type-writing, German, Chemistry cla.s.ses, Electricity lectures, Zoology (including dissections) and field work. Am reading Mosenthal's _Muscle and Nerve_.

_April_ 7.

Sectioned a leech. H---- has lent me a hand microtome and I have borrowed an old razor. My table in the Attic is now fitted up quite like a Laboratory. I get up every morning at 6 a.m. to dissect. Have worked at the Anatomy of _Dytiscus, Lumbricus_, another Leech, and _Petromyzon fluviatilis_ all collected by myself. The "branchial basket" of _Petromyzon_ interested me vastly. But it's a brute to dissect.[1]

_May_ 1.

Cycled to the Lighthouse at the mouth of the Estuary. Underneath some telegraph wires, picked up a Landrail in excellent condition. The colour of the wings is a beautiful warm chestnut. While sweeping the sandhills with my field-gla.s.ses in search of Ring Plover, which nest there in the s.h.i.+ngle beaches, I espied a Shelduck (_Tadorna_) squatting on a piece of level ground. On walking up cautiously, found it was dead--a Drake in splendid plumage and quite fresh and uninjured. Put him in my poacher's pocket, alongside of the Landrail. My coat looked rather bulgy, for a Shelduck is nearly as big as a Goose. Heard a Gra.s.shopper Warbler--a rare bird in North ----. Later, after much patient watching, saw the bird in a bramble bush, creeping about like a mouse.

On the sea-sh.o.r.e picked up a number of Sea Mice (_Aphrodite_) and bottled them in my jar of 70 per cent., as they will come in useful for dissection. Also found the cranium of a _Scyllium_, which I will describe later on.

Near the Lighthouse watched some fishermen bring in a large Salmon in a seine net worked from the sh.o.r.e. It was most exciting. Cycled down three miles of hard sand with the wind behind me to the village where I had tea and--as if nothing could stay to-day's good luck--met Margaret ----.