The author who made a living measuring the legs of lice

Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion, real name Bruce Frederick Cummings, earned his living measuring the legs of lice in the Natural History Museum. ‘To the lay mind how fantastic this must seem!’ he exclaimed in his journal, before enumerating his enthusiasms for Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, names like ‘Mr. Hogsflesh’ and ‘Pickle Herring Street’, and Petticoat Lane on Sunday mornings.

The young naturalist had a habit of landing himself in embarrassing situations. He once spotted a pretty woman at the theatre and composed a notice for the classifieds in a bid to find her. The editor sent his missive back supposing he was a white-slave trafficker. Another time, a new mother with a ‘large, red udder’ and an uninterested infant offered to suckle him on the bus.. ‘Do I look ill nourished?’ Barbellion wondered to himself later.

If you haven’t read The Journal of a Disappointed Man, and I hadn’t, the recent episode of Backlisted will have you running to do so at once. Presented by John Mitchinson and Andy Miller for the publishing house Unbound, the podcast prides itself on ‘giving new life to old books’, but with Barbellion it’s more a case of celebrating a life preserved through books. The author of the hilarious coming-of-age Journal and A Last Diary was just 30 when he died of multiple sclerosis in 1919.

Barbellion described his journal as a ‘self-portrait in the nude’. He filled it with confessions, the natural products, he believed, of a true scientist and ‘self-investigator’. But there is an endearing bravado, a ‘boyishness’ they called it in the episode, to Barbellion’s persona. The most enjoyable moments of their discussion were prompted by Barbellion’s boyishly self-knowing lines. One could not help but smile as they read his passages on the reception of his Journal in the weeklies:

‘For the most part the reviewers say what I have told them to say in the book.