And work he did, for in little more than a year he was offered a small appointment at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, which he had to refuse because of his father's complete incapacity. But after another year of newspaper work and intensive study at night and at odd moments, he won an appointment in competitive examination to the staff of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. There he remained six years, until July, 1917, when he was compelled to resign owing to the progress of his disease. In September, 1915, he married, after he had been declared unfit for military duty and after the secret of his obscure and baffling disease, and its outcome, had been revealed to some of his family and to his fiancée.
Two months after he married, despite his infirm state, he offered his services to his King and Country, having previously obtained from his own physician a letter addressed to the Medical Officer Examining Recruits. The recruiting officer promptly rejected him, so the letter was not presented. On his way home Barbellion opened it and read his death sentence. “On the whole, I am amazed at the calm way in which I take this news.” At first he thought he would read up his disease in some System of Medicine, but the next day he wrote,
“I have decided never to find out what it is. I shall find out in good time by the course of events. A few years ago the news would have scared me. But not so now. It only interests me. I have been happy, merry, quite high spirited today.”
But this was soon followed by depression and despair, as the progress of the disease was attested by the occurrence of rapidly increasing incapacity to get about, to use his arm, and to see. At that time he was ignorant of the fact that his wife had been informed of the nature and outcome of his disease previous to their marriage, and he was very much concerned lest she should find out. Within a year he discovered that she had known from the beginning and he was “overwhelmed with feelings of shame and self-contempt and sorrow for her.”
The last months of his life were made as comfortable as possible by funds subscribed by a few literary men who had become interested in him from the publication of some chapters of the book in the London Mercury, and by the royalties from the publishers of the “Journal” in book form.
Barbellion's appearance, as described by his brother A. J., in the Preface to “The Last Diary,” was striking. He was more than six feet tall, thin as a rake, and looked like a typical consumptive. His head was large and crowned with thick brown hair which fell carelessly about his brow; his face pale and sharply pointed; eyes deepset, lustrous and wide apart; nose slightly irregular; mouth large and firm; and chin like a rock. “Few people, except my barber, know how amourous I am. He has to shave my sinuous lips.” He had an indescribable vividness of expression, great play of features, and a musical voice. His hands were strong and sensitive and he had a characteristic habit of beating the air with them in emphasising an argument. He moved and walked languidly, like a tired man, and stooped slightly, which gave him an attitude of studiousness.
Barbellion's fame depends entirely upon “The Journal of a Disappointed Man.” “Enjoying Life and Other Literary Remains” is commonplace and might have been done by any one of countless writers whose years transcend their reputations. “The Last Diary,” on the other hand, has a note of superficiality which is prejudicial to permanence. It suggests that it was done for effect and displays studious effort to be wise and philosophical. Although the book contains many beautiful specimens of sentiment and shows that Barbellion had enhanced his literary skill and added to his capacity for expression and sequential statement, it also shows that the processes of dissolution, physical and mental, were going on apace.
So much for the outward facts of his life. The value of the record lies entirely in the sincerity and completeness of the “portrait in the nude” which the author has painted of himself and which furnishes the basis for a psychological study of the original.
Three characteristics make the shape and colour of this portrait. Whether seen in one comprehensive glance as a composite picture, or subjected to a searching analysis of its separate parts, these three facts must be reckoned with in any estimate of his life or of his personality as a whole; or of the smallest act, thought, or emotion which entered into it. The features or leading motives which shaped the human study that Barbellion has given us in his diaries are what he calls ambition to achieve fame, a passion for the study of zoology, and a struggle against disease.
Every life which raises its possessor above the level of the clod may be called a battleground. The battle, in Barbellion's case a hard-fought one, was between ambition which inspired and actuated him and disease which seriously handicapped him during most of his life and finally caused his death—not, however, until after the victory had been won, since the odds were between fame and sickness, not between life and death. Judged, therefore, solely by the strength of the forces involved in the conflict and not at all by the value of the stakes, Barbellion's struggle and early death may claim a little of the glory suggested in the lines “Oft near the sunset are great battles won.”