A Last Diary | Page 2

silence." Nearly the whole of the diary is in his own handwriting, which in the last entries became a scarcely legible scrawl, though in moments of exceptional physical weakness he dictated to his wife and sister. Up to the last his mind retained its extraordinary strength and vigour. His eyes never lost their curiously pathetic look of questioning "liveness." In that feeble form "a badly articulated skeleton" he had called himself long before his eyes were indeed the only feature left by which those who loved him could still keep recognition of his physical presence. His body was a gaunt, white framework of skin and bone, enclosing a spirit still so passionately alive that it threatened to burst asunder the frail bonds that imprisoned it. I think those who read the diary will agree that while it is mellower and more delicate in tone it shows no sign of mental deterioration or of any decline in the quality and texture of his thoughts, certainly no failure in the power of literary expression. The very last long entry, written the day before he laid down his pen to write no more, is a little masterpiece of joyous description, in which with the exact knowledge of the zoologist and the subtle sense of the artist, he gives reasons why "the brightest thing in the world is a Ctenophor in a glass jar standing in the sun." Mr. Edward Shanks, in an essay of singular understanding, has quoted this particular entry, a flashing remembrance of earlier days, as a characteristic example of those "exquisite descriptions of landscapes and living things which grow more vivid and more moving as the end approaches." The appreciation written by Mr. Shanks appeared in March of the present year in the London Mercury, which also published in successive numbers other extracts from the diary that is now given in extenso. With the help of my brother, H. R. Cummings, who has been responsible for most of the work involved in preparing the manuscript for the press, I have made a few verbal changes and corrections; and certain passages have been omitted which, now that Barbellion's identity is established, seem to refer too openly and too intimately to persons still alive. Otherwise the entries appear exactly as they were made.
In recent months I have been asked by various persons, many of whom I do not know and have never seen, but who have been profoundly interested in the personality of Barbellion, to write a "straightforward " account of his life. Some of these correspondents seem to imagine that it holds a strange mystery not disclosed in the frank story of the Journal, while others suspect that the events of his career, as he recorded them, are a judicious blend of truth and fiction. I can only say as emphatically as possible that there is no mystery of any sort, and that the facts of his life are in close accordance with his own narrative. Obviously the disconnected diary form must be incomplete, and in some respects puzzling; and clearly he selected for treatment in a book those entries of fact which were appropriate to the scheme of his journal. They were chosen, as I have already indicated, from a great mass of material that accumulated from week to week over a period of about fifteen years. But they are neither invented nor deliberately coloured to suit his purpose. When he spoke of himself he spoke the truth as far as he knew it; when he spoke of others he spoke the truth as far as he knew it; when he spoke of actual events they had happened as nearly as possible as he related them.
The accounts of his career, published at the time of his death last year, were accurate in their general outline. Bruce Frederick C u minings (Barbellion's real name) was born at the little town of Barnstaple in North Devon, on September 7, 1889. He was the youngest of a family of six three boys and three girls. His father was a journalist who had achieved no mean reputation, local though it was, as a pungent political writer, and had created for himself what must have been, even in those days, a peculiar position for the district representative of a country newspaper. He was a shrewd but kindly judge of men; he had a quick wit, a facile pen, and an unusual charm of manner that made him a popular figure everywhere. In fact, in the area covered by his activities he exercised in his prime a personal influence unique of its kind, and such as would be scarcely possible under modern conditions of newspaper work. Though they had little in common temperamentally, there always existed a strong tie of affection between my father and Barbellion,