Читать книгу The Journal of a Disappointed Man - W.N.P. Barbellion - Страница 5

January 15.

I am thinking that on the whole I am a most discontented mortal. I get fits of what I call "What's the good of anything" mania. I keep asking myself incessantly till the question wears me out: "What's the good of going into the country naturalising? what's the good of studying so hard? where is it going to end? will it lead anywhere?"

February 17.

When I can get hold of any one interested in Natural History I talk away in the most garrulous manner and afterwards feel ashamed of myself for doing it.

May 15.

The Captain, in answer to my letter, advises me to join one of the ordinary professions and then follow up Nat. History as a recreation, or else join Science Classes at S. Kensington, or else by influence get a post in the Natural History Museum. But I shall see.

June 9.

During dinner hour, between morning and afternoon school, went out on the S – B – River Bank, and found another Sedge Warbler's nest. This is the fifth I have found this year. People who live opposite on the T – V – hear them sing at night and think they are Nightingales!

June 27.

On reviewing the past egg-season, I find in all I have discovered 232 nests belonging to forty-four species. I only hope I shall be as successful with the beetle-season.

August 15.

A hot, sultry afternoon, during most of which I was stretched out on the grass beside an upturned stone where a battle royal was fought between Yellow and Black Ants. The victory went to the hardy little Yellows… By the way, I held a Newt by the tail to-day and it emitted a squeak! So that the Newt has a voice after all.

August 26.

In bed with a feverish cold. I am afraid I have very few Nat. His. observations to make. It is hard to observe anything at all when lying in bed in a dull bedroom with one small window. Gulls and Starlings pass, steam engines whistle, horses' feet clatter down the street, and sometimes the voice of a passer-by reaches me, and often the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind. I can also hear my own cough echoing through my head, and, by the evening, the few pages of Lubbock's Ants, Bees, and Wasps which I struggled to get through during the day rattle through my brain till I am disgusted to find I have them by heart. The clock strikes midnight and I wait for the morning. Oh! what a weary world.

October 13.

Down with another cold. Feeling pretty useless. It's a wonder I don't develop melancholia.

November 6.

By 7 a.m. H – and I were down on the mudflats of the River with field-glasses, watching Waders. Ringed Plover in great numbers.