That the second motive mentioned, the love of zoology, entered into the conflict only as an ally, and not even an essential one, of the desire to become famous, has a special psychological interest. Unquestionable and persistent as was this passion for the science, it did not seem to form the basis for his ambition nor even to be inextricably bound up with it, as is usually the case with persons possessed of one strongly marked talent or taste combined with a dominant ambition. When nature has favoured an individual with a gift in the way of desire and ability to do one thing particularly well he usually concentrates on it. In fact the desire to achieve success through the talent, and the impulse for self-expression along the line of the talent, are so closely related that it is impossible to disentangle them and to say where the impulse for self-expression ends and the ambition to succeed begins. Barbellion's diaries, however, present no such difficulty. Conscious from early childhood of a great attraction to zoology for the sheer love of the science, his early life-plan naturally took the form of a career as a zoologist. Thwarted by circumstances, he still held to the plan with an admirable persistence and a measure of success which, considering his handicaps in the way of illness and lack of opportunities for study and training, would have been satisfactory to a less ambitious man. Such success would not, however, have given him the fame which it was the ruling motive of his life to achieve. Whether or not it was the recognition of this that determined the direction of his ambition it is impossible to say. The fact that stands out with great clearness, after reading his diaries, is that the consuming passion of his life was the desire for fame for its own sake, to be known of men, and to stand out from the mass of humanity as a man of distinction, a successful man. This seemed to be the full measure of Barbellion's ambition, and in this he succeeded, since the diaries have made him famous as the author of a record which shows him to the world as the winner of a losing game with life, though not as a scientist or as a writer of distinction.
A closer analysis of the particular qualities of Barbellion's ambition is the first step in an estimate of his personality.
The urge to keep a journal may come from within or from without the individual. Barbellion does not tell us which it was with him. In late childhood he began making frequent records of his doings, which were those of a lonely romantic child interested in natural history. During the first three years there is no record of thought, but beginning with his sixteenth year it makes its appearance, and there is ample evidence that he was not only mature beyond his years, but ambitious as well. He says of himself,
“I was ambitious before I was breeched. I can remember wondering as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin and secretly deciding that I was. My infant mind even was bitter with those who insisted on regarding me as a normal child and not as a prodigy. Since then I have struggled with this canker for many a day, and as success fails to arrive it becomes more gnawing.”
That the “canker” was eating its way into his soul as life progressed and success seemed no nearer from day to day is evidenced by the statements:
“I owe neither a knee nor a bare grammercy to any man. All that I did I did by my own initiative, save one exception. R. taught me to love music.”
“I am daily facing the fact that my ambitions have overtaxed my abilities and health. For years my whole existence has rested on a false estimate of my own value, and my life has been revolving around a foolish self-deception. And I know myself as I am at last and I am not at all enamoured.”
As the “Journal” progresses it becomes evident that the author's hopes for the realisation of his ambition rested entirely on its publication, and it is in the expressions concerning his hopes and fears in connection with the book that the struggle of the soul in its death grip with advancing disease and threatening failure is most poignantly expressed. Three years before he died he said,
“It is the torture of Tantalus to be so uncertain. I should be relieved to know even the worst. I would almost gladly burn my MSS. in the pleasure of having my curiosity satisfied. I go from the nadir of disappointment to the zenith of hope and back several times a week, and all the time I am additionally harassed by the perfect consciousness that it is all petty and pusillanimous to desire to be known and appreciated, that my ambition is a morbid diathesis of the mind. I am not such a fool either as not to see that there is but little satisfaction in posthumous fame, and I am not such a fool as not to realise that all fame is fleeting, and that the whole world itself is passing away.”
A few months later, after a reference to his infant daughter, he said,