One hundred years ago The Journal of a Disappointed Man—W. N. P. Barbellion’s remarkable account of his life, loves, and valiant fight and losing battle against multiple sclerosis—was published. The book, which the English author termed “a self-portrait in the nude,” begins as “a Diary of a Naturalist’s observations,” grows into a frank record of daily events, professional progress, artistic impressions, and “introspective muck-rakings,” and ends up a no-holds-barred chronicle of stoic suffering and painful decline. “My Journal,” Barbellion writes at one point, “keeps open house to every kind of happening in my soul.”
Seven months after its publication in October 1919, Barbellion died, aged thirty. The editorial note which followed the last entry in the Journal was a fabrication, a smokescreen: “Barbellion died on December 31 [1917].” The author’s name proved equally false: obituaries in the press informed the reading public that “W. N. P. Barbellion” was in actual fact the nom de plume of Bruce Frederick Cummings. “But that is the only camouflage,” wrote H. G. Wells. “It is a genuine diary.” Granted, it is the real deal, but I believe Barbellion’s book is more than just a diary, a systematic summary of days. For me, it stands as a vital, vivid, and deeply affecting testimony of one man’s zest for life, his burning desire to live, and his eventual acceptance of his impending death.
Barbellion, or rather Cummings, was born in 1889 in Barnstaple, Devon, the youngest of six children. After nearly dying
