A Disappointed Man

Where Next?
Bob Williams
Thu 1 Jul 2010 00:41

Alongside Club Nautico Reloncavi, Puerto Montt
Weather: rain and drizzle, cool


I have discovered a book, The Journal of a Disappointed Man, by W(ilhelm) N(ero) P(ilate) Barbellion, the nom-de-plume of Bruce Frederick Cummings (7 September 1889 - 22 October 1919). The introduction by H.G. Wells is wonderful. A short extract:

December 26, 1910.

Windy Ash

With the dog for a walk around Windy Ash. It was a beautiful winter's morning—a low sun giving out a pale light but no warmth—a luminant, not a fire—the hedgerows bare and well trimmed, an Elm lopped close showing white stumps which glistened liquidly in the sun, a Curlew whistling overhead, a deeply cut lane washed hard and clean by the winter rains, a gunshot from a distant cover, a creeping Wren, silent and tame, in a bramble bush, and over the five-barred gate the granite roller with vacant shafts. I leaned on the gate and saw the great whisps of cloud in the sky like comets' tails. Everything cold, crystalline.

Bob Cat:

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.