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Bruce Frederick Cummings, or, to use his exotic, comical pseudonym Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion (1889-1919) is undoubtedly one of the finest diarists that England has produced. The chances are, however, that you have never heard of him; why is he worthy of such praise?
Cummings was born in Barnstaple, Devon, in 1889, an ambitious, self-taught naturalist, who gave up his career in journalism for a prestigious post at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. He was undoubtedly respected in his work at the museum, in a branch of entomology, and provided advice on the pressing subject of louse infestation to the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War One. He was not, however, by any means a famous public figure; and his diary contains nothing of the great and the good, with the solitary exception being an awkward luncheon with a minor aristocrat, ruined by an unfortunate faux pas ('It was a Turkish cigarette with one end plugged up with cotton-wool — to absorb the nicotine — a thing I've never seen before. I was so flurried at the time that I did not notice this and lit the wrong end.')
Does this book's strength lie in social history? Certainly, it contains some fascinating detail about life in Edwardian London — a visit to Petticoat Lane; a working-class mother breast-feeding on an omnibus; Zeppelin raids; a visit to the White City — but these are not the meat of the book. The core is Cummings/Barbellion himself: his own life history; his warped sense of humour; his struggle with multiple sclerosis (a condition, initially kept from him by well-meaning doctors, which thwarted his career and lead to his untimely death); his own excoriating self-analysis/dissection of his motives and character. His prose, full of wry wit and humour, is also exceptional. If you doubt this, consider that H.G.Wells, who offered a preface to the printed book, was widely believed to be the author behind the unlikely pseudonym.
In short, the beauty of 'The Journal of a Disappointed Man' is Barbellion's personality shining through every aspect of his writing. One is reminded of that other great diarist, Kenneth Williams. We have the obsessive chronicling of ill-health ('At present I arrange two gunpowder plots a week. It's abominable. Best literature for the latrine: picture puzzles.'); comical vanity ('Few people, except my barber, know how amorous I am. He has to shave my sinuous lips.'); flashes of wisdom ('Real happiness lies in the little things, in a bit of garden work, the rattle of the teacups in the next room, the last chapter of a book.'); a dollop of misanthropy ('It is now one hour before I need leave for the meeting, and whether I sigh, cough, smoke, or read the paper, she goes on. She even refuses to allow me to scan the lines below photos in the Illustrated London News. I write this as the last sole resource to escape her devastating prattle and the ceaseless hum of her tiny gnat like mind. She thinks — because I told her so — that I am preparing notes for the evening meeting.'). We have the author agonising over the prospect of marriage, proclaiming his own cynicism ('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 degrees below real love heat. In any case I am constitutionally and emotionally unfaithful. I said things which I did not believe just because it was dark and she was charming.') and yet, once wed, he is capable of the most romantic notions ('Each day I drop a specially selected Buttercup in past the little 'Peeler,' at the apex of the 'V' to lie among the blue ribbons of her camisoles ...')
Most importantly, what emerges is a complex, rounded picture of the 'disappointed man' himself — to whose company you become accustomed, warts and all. By the book's conclusion, I guarantee that you will long for the author to continue writing, and escape the inevitable, tragic end that awaits him.
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