Later: … Zoology on occasion still fires my ambition! Surely I cannot be dying yet.
Whatever misfortune befalls me I do hope I shall be able to meet it unflinchingly. I do not fear ill-health in itself, but I do fear its possible effect on my mind and character. … Already I am slowly altering, as the Lord liveth. Already for example my sympathy with myself is maudlin.
Whenever the blow shall fall, some sort of a reaction must be given. Heine flamed into song. Beethoven wrote the 5th Symphony. So what shall I do when my time comes? I don’t think I have any lyrics or symphonies to write, so I shall just have to grin and bear it—like a dumb animal. … As long as I have spirit and buoyancy I don’t care what happens—for I know that for so long I cannot be accounted a failure. The only real failure is one in which the victim is left spiritless, dazed, dejected with blackness all around, and within, a knife slowly and unrelentingly cutting the strings of his heart.
My head whirls with conflicting emotions, struggling, desperate ideas, and a flood of impressions of all sorts of things that are never sufficiently sifted and arranged to be caught down on paper. I am brought into this world, hustled along it and then hustled out of it, with no time for anything. I want to be on a great hill and square up affairs.
… After tea, we all three walked in Kensington Gardens and sat on a seat by the Round Pond. My umbrella fell to the ground, and I left it there with its nose poking up in a cynical manner, as She remarked.
“It’s not cynical,” I said, “only a little knowing. Won’t you let yours fall down to keep it company? Yours is a lady umbrella and a good-looking one—they might flirt together.”
“Mine doesn’t want to flirt,” she answered stiffly.
At C⸺, a tiny little village by the sea in N⸺.
Looking up from a rock pool, where I had been watching Gobies, I saw three children racing across the sands to bathe, I saw a man dive from a boat, and I saw a horseman gallop his mare down to the beach and plunge about in the line of breakers. The waters thundered, the mare whinnied, the children shouted to one another, and I turned my head down again to the rock pool with a great thumping heart of happiness: it was so lovely to be conscious of the fact that out there this beautiful picture was awaiting me whenever and as often as I chose to lift my head. I purposely kept my head down, for the picture was so beautiful I did not want to hurt it by breathing on it, and I kept my head down out of a playful self-cheating delight; I decided not to indulge myself.
Out in the Bay dredging for Echinoderms with “Carrots.” Brilliantly fine. The haul was a failure, but, being out in a boat on a waveless sea under a cloudless sky, I was scarcely depressed at this! We cruised along from one little bay to another, past smugglers’ caves and white pebble beaches, the dredge all the while growling along the sea bottom, and “Carrots” and I lying listless in the bows. I was immensely happy. My mercury was positively ringing the bell.
Who, then, is “Carrots”? He is a fine brawny boatman who jumps over the rocks like a Chamois, swims like a Fish, pulls like an Ox, snorts like a Grampus—a sort of compound zoological perfection, built eclectically.
Early Boughies
Up the village, Mrs. Beavan keeps a tiny little shop and runs a very large garden. She showed us all about the garden, and introduced us to her husband, whom we discovered in an apple tree—an old man, aged seventy-six, very hard of hearing, and with an impediment in his speech. He at once began to move his mouth, and I caught odd jingles of sound that sounded like nothing at all—at first, but which gradually resolved themselves on close attention to such familiar landmarks as “Early Boughies,” “Stubbits,” “Ribstone Pippins” into a discourse on Apples.
The following curious conversation took place between me and the deaf gaffer, aged seventy-six, standing in the apple tree—
“These be all appulls from Kent—I got ’em all from Kent.”
“How long have you lived in C⸺?”
“Bunyard & Son—that’s the firm—they live just outside the town of Maidstone.”
“Do you keep Bees here?”
“One of these yer appulls is called Bunyard after the firm—a fine fruit too.”
“Your good wife must be of great assistance to you in your work.”
“Little stalks maybe, but a large juishy appull for all that.”
Just then I heard Mrs. B⸺ saying to E⸺—
“Aw yes, he’s very active for seventy-six. A little deaf, but he manages the garden all ’eesulf, I bolsters ’un up wi’ meat and drink—little and often as they zay for children. … Now there’s a bootifull tree, me dear, that ’as almost beared itself to death, as you may say.”
She picked an apple off it shouting to poor Tom still aloft—
“Tom what’s the name of this one?”
“You should come a bit earlier, zir,” replied T. “ ’Tis late a bit now doan’t ’ee zee?”
“No—what’s its name I want,” shouted his spouse.
“Yes, yes, give the lady one to take home—there’s plenty for all,” he said.
“What is the name? The name of the yer appull,” screamed Mrs. B., and old Tom moving his bones slowly down from the tree answered quite unmoved—
“Aw the name? Why, ’tis a common kind of appull—there’s a nice tree of ’em up there.”
“Oh! never mind, ’tis a Gladstone,” said Mrs. B., turning to us.
“A very fine Appull,” droned the old boy.
Back in town again. Wandered about in a somnambulistic way all the afternoon till I
