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349
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
·
W. N. P. Barbellion
188
If
however
my
cork
does
come
out,
there
is
an
explosion,
and
placid
people
occasionally
marvel
to
hear
violent
language
streaming
from
my
lips
and
nasty
acid
and
facetious
remarks.
Of
course,
to
intimate
friends
(only
about
three
persons
in
the
wide,
wide
world),
I
can
always
give
free
vent
to
my
feelings,
and
I
do
so
in
privacy
with
that
violence
in
which
a
weak
character
usually
finds
some
compensation
for
his
intolerable
self-imposed
reserve
and
restraint
in
public.
I
can
never
marvel
enough
at
the
ineradicable
turpitude
of
my
existence,
at
my
double-facedness,
and
the
remarkable
contrast
between
the
face
I
turn
to
the
outside
world
and
the
face
my
friends
know.
It's
like
leading
a
double
existence
or
artificially
constructing
a
puppet
to
dangle
before
the
crowd
while
I
fulminate
behind
the
scenes.
If
only
I
had
the
moral
courage
to
play
my
part
in
life--to
take
the
stage
and
be
myself,
to
enjoy
the
delightful
sensation
of
making
my
presence
felt,
instead
of
this
vapourish
mumming--then
this
Journal
would
be
quite
unnecessary.
For
to
me
self-expression
is
a
necessity
of
life,
and
what
cannot
be
expressed
one
way
must
be
expressed
in
another.
When
colossal
egotism
is
driven
underground,
whether
by
a
steely
surface
environment
or
an
unworkable
temperament
or
as
in
my
case
by
both,
you
get
a
truly
remarkable
result,
and
the
victim
a
truly
remarkable
pain--the
pain
one
might
say
of
continuously
unsuccessful
attempts
at
parturition.
It
is
perhaps
not
the
whole
explanation
to
say
that
my
milky
affability
before,
say
bores
or
clods
is
sheer
personal
cowardice....
It
is
partly
real
affability.
I
am
so
glad
to
have
opposite
me
some
one
who
is
making
himself
pleasant
and
affable
and
sympathetic
that
I
forget
for
the
moment
that
he
is
an
unconscionable
time-server,
a
sycophant,
lick-spittle,
toady,
etc.
My
first
impulse
is
always
to
credit
folk
with
being
nicer,
cleverer,
more
honest
and
amiable
than
they
are.
Then,
on
reflection,
I
discover
unpleasing
characteristics,
I
detect
their
little
motives,
and
hate
myself
for
not
speaking.
The
fellow
is
intolerable,
why
did
I
not
tell
him
so?
Bitter
recriminations
from
my
critical
self
upon
my
flabby
amiable
half.
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