What adds fuel to his fire is a person who glories in his eccentricity, which of course is true of all of us, in that we glory in ourselves. And of course the inevitable immorality touched on, which is always connected with eccentricities.
B. G. of course he merely regards as really and actively evil, and I don’t blame him as he does not know B. G., whose appearance is well calculated to sow the seeds of doubt and dislike in any righteous person. Furthermore, he can’t see what good any of us are going to do in after-life. He said that he was going into the army, he trumpeted that, and then because we were alone together he put me out of the argument by saying that I should be a future financier.
I could not answer him, there was nothing further to say, but in the course of the running fire that we kept up afterwards just to show that there was no ill-feeling, he actually said that Seymour went up in his estimation because he had won his House hundred yards. Extraordinary! Very interesting, and, of course, a view which is almost incredible to me, in fact a great eye-opener.
Had to return in a hurry from the dentist who has given up trying to kill the nerve in my tooth. He prophesied what he called a “sting” in it to-night: he under-estimated it considerably. It is hurting damnably.
21 July.
Am reading a very good book on the Second Empire with Napoleon the Third. It is in the Lytton Strachey style, which after Carlyle’s is, I think, the most amusing.
The Volunteers’ Camp and all its attendant horrors is getting quite close now: though I could get off whenever I wanted to with my hammer-toes, but I want to go just for once.
22 July.
Bell’s, across the way, have bought as many as seven hunting-horns. Each possessor blows it unceasingly, just when one wants to read. They don’t do it all together, but take it in turns to keep up one forced note. Really, it might be Eton. They can only produce the one note during the whole day.
In addition to this trifling detail, it is “the thing to do” now to throw stones at me as I sit at my window. However, I have just called E. N. a “milch cow,” and shall on the first opportunity call D. J. B. a “bovine goat,” which generally relieves matters. These epithets have the real authentic Noat Art Society touch, haven’t they?