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349
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
·
W. N. P. Barbellion
163
The
Albert
Hall
Hag
While
waiting
outside
the
Albert
Hall,
an
extraordinarily
weird
contrast
thrust
itself
before
me--she
was
the
most
pathetic
piece
of
human
jetsam
that
ever
I
saw
drifting
about
in
this
sea
of
London
faces.
Tall,
gaunt,
cadaverous,
the
skin
of
her
face
drawn
tightly
over
her
cheekbones
and
over
a
thin,
pointed,
hook-shaped
nose,
on
her
feet
brown
sandshoes,
dressed
in
a
long
draggle-tailed
skirt,
a
broken-brimmed
straw
hat,
beneath
which
some
scanty
hair
was
scraped
back
and
tied
behind
in
a
knot--this
wretched
soul
of
some
thirty
summers
(and
what
summers!)
stood
in
the
road
beside
the
waiting
queue
and
weakly
passed
the
bow
across
her
violin
which
emitted
a
slight
scraping
sound.
She
could
not
play
a
tune
and
the
fingers
of
her
left
hand
never
touched
the
strings--they
merely
held
the
handle.
A
policeman
passed
and,
with
an
eye
on
the
queue,
muttered
audibly,
"Not
'arf,"
but
no
one
laughed.
Then
she
began
to
rummage
in
her
skirt,
holding
the
violin
by
the
neck
in
her
right
hand
just
as
she
must
hold
her
brat
by
the
arm
when
at
home.
Simultaneously
sounds
issued
from
her
mouth
in
a
high
falsetto
key;
they
were
unearthly
sounds,
the
tiny
voice
of
an
articulating
corpse
underneath
the
coffin
lid.
For
a
moment
no
one
realised
that
she
was
reciting.
For
she
continued
to
rummage
in
her
skirt
as
she
squeaked,
"Break,
break,
break,
on
thy
cold
gray
stones,
O
sea,"
etc.
The
words
were
scarcely
audible
tho'
she
stood
but
two
yards
off.
But
she
repeated
the
verse
and
I
then
made
out
what
it
was.
She
seemed
ashamed
of
herself
and
of
her
plight,
almost
without
the
courage
to
foist
this
mockery
of
violin-playing
on
us--one
would
say
she
was
frightened
by
her
own
ugliness
and
her
own
pathos.
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