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NOT DISAPPOINTED

I have just finished reading

The Journal of a Disappointed Man

by Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion, the nom-de-plume of Bruce Frederick Cummings (7 September 1889 – 22 October 1919).

Bennett took the name as a cover because the diary was published at the end of his very short life time and many people in his circle were still living.

Barbellion started the diary when he was 13.

He was a self taught zoologist, collecting, dissecting, reading before he was college age. Because of family finances, he basically supported his father who was a journalist by writing his material for him and then began to have his own byline in County news.

The remarkable thing about this diary is that we know and, eventually, he will find out that he has multiple sclerosis and, therefore, only a short time to live. Almost 30 years.

Here is why the diary is important. It throbs with life. He is an amazing man. Young, vital, intelligent and quite without inhibition. A rascal and a rake but highly moral. Honest to a fault about his point of view of people, places and things. Hence the anonymous publication. There are not many things he missed doing in his short life. Except get old, of course.

At an early age he achieved an appointment to the British Museum, a sinecure, as an entomologist where he meets a life long friend with whom he has an extraordinary relationship. Happy, smart, brave, the two young men reinforce each other's precocity.

He meets a young woman with whom he falls desperately in love. He is disarmed by this. He fumbles and stumbles around, dopey from the exhilaration of it. Love sick. They marry.

The circumstances of their getting together are complicated by the fact that she knows his future and he does not. This is in the days when the docs didn't tell you about what was going on.

She marries him anyway. I would.

They have a daughter.

Here is the thing. Barbellion's observation about life, nature and human, are as current as any account could be. They read fresh today.

He also wrote in a style which, later, he saw James Joyce use so effectively in his works.

One would think that something like this would be morbid. A downer.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The knowledge of death, I mean we all will die, is a great liberator. The book is filled with joy.

I believe that it has always been in print. Right now it is between printings and I had to buy a used copy but that won't last for very long.

His brother wrote:

"he was as greedy as a shark for life in the raw, for the whole of life"

This is how I found reading this book to be.

There is a "Last Diary" appended which gathers together additional writings as well as the diary after the publication.

I will keep this book. Not one for the library pile where most go now. We don't save books any more. Well, I don't.

Labels: books