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349
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
·
W. N. P. Barbellion
5
An
uncle,
a
chemist,
seems
to
have
encouraged
the
tendency,
and
to
have
given
him
textbooks
and
other
help.
Somehow
at
any
rate
he
acquired
a
considerable
amount
of
knowledge;
by
the
time
he
was
eighteen
he
was
already
publishing
quite
excellent
observations
of
his
own
in
such
periodicals
as
the
Zoologist,
and
by
the
time
he
was
twenty
he
could
secure
an
appointment
as
assistant
naturalist
to
the
director
of
a
well-known
marine
biological
station.
It
was
a
success,
as
the
reader
will
learn,
gained
only
to
be
renounced.
His
father
was
ill
and
he
had
to
stand
by
his
family;
our
economical
country
cannot
afford
to
make
biologists
out
of
men
who
can
earn
a
living
as
hack
reporters.
Poverty
and
science
are
sisters
wherever
the
flag
of
Britain
waves;
for
how
could
the
rich
live
if
we
wasted
money
on
that
sort
of
thing?
But
the
dream
was
not
altogether
abandoned,
and
in
1911
Barbellion
got
a
post,
one
of
the
dozen
or
so
of
rare
and
coveted
opportunities
to
toil
in
a
scientific
atmosphere
that
our
Empire
affords;
he
secured
an
assistantship
at
the
Natural
History
Museum,
South
Kensington,
to
which
a
living
wage
was
attached,
a
fair
equivalent
to
a
reporter's
earnings.
The
rest
of
the
story
needs
no
helping
out.
Let
me
only
add
that
since
1911
Barbellion,
in
spite
of
his
steadily
diminishing
strength,
has
published
articles
in
both
British
and
American
periodicals,
that
entirely
justify
the
statement
that
in
him
biological
science
loses
one
of
the
most
promising
of
its
recent
recruits.
His
scientific
work
is
not
only
full
and
exact
but
it
has
those
literary
qualities,
the
grace,
the
power
of
handling,
the
breadth
of
reference,
which
have
always
distinguished
the
best
English
biological
work,
and
which
mark
off
at
once
the
true
scientific
man
from
the
mere
collector
and
recorder
of
items.
With
this
much
introduction
Barbellion
may
be
left
to
tell
the
tragedy
of
his
hopes
and
of
the
dark,
unforeseen,
unforeseeable,
and
inexplicable
fate
that
has
overtaken
him.
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