“We have numbers of bulbs at present in flower,” I said severely. “Scillas and chinodoxas, and daffodils, and tulips, and Iris Alata, and many others.”
“Ah, potted bulbs. They’re poor sort of things generally, don’t you think? Some people, I believe, like them though.”
“We have Cyclamen Coum in flower out of doors,” I added; garden vanity, or more probably deflected ill-humour, arousing in me a sudden spirit of violent horticultural rivalry.
“Oh, you have, have you?"—this in a tone of somewhat enhanced respect. “Don’t you shelter it at all?”
“Not in the least!” I replied contemptuously. “We grow it out in the copse; on the stones; in all directions. It is a perfect weed with us. No weather seems to make the slightest difference.”
I am really surprised that I did not assert that we had Orchids and Bougainvillæas growing out of doors in the snow! It is probable that I should have done so in another five minutes, for irritation sometimes takes the oddest forms. Luckily for my veracity our roads just then diverged; my horticultural acquaintance getting out at the next station, and I continuing on my way to Guildford.
I don’t think I have ever in my life felt more ruffled, more thoroughly exasperated than I was by that most uncalled-for remark about the Tommies. Had they been all individually my sons or my nephews I doubt if I could have felt more insulted! I adore my garden, and yield to no one in my estimation of its supreme importance as a topic; still there are moments when even horticulture must learn to bow its head; when the reputation of one’s Flag rises to a higher place in one’s estimation than even the reputation of one’s flower-beds. “Anemone Blanda!” I repeated several times to myself in the course of the afternoon, and each time with a stronger feeling of exasperation. “Anemone Blanda, indeed!”
February 13, 1900
IF what lies beyond the next few weeks could be suddenly laid open to us, what should we see? It is, I am aware, rank cowardice upon my part, but if by merely ruffling over the blank pages of this diary which I hold in my hand I could in an instant find out, I know that I should refuse to do so. The same feeling has beset me before now, but hitherto always with regard to personal matters; never, so far as I can remember, with regard to public ones. Three weeks! It is not a very long time. Only a few more crocuses and scillas will be out in our little Dutch garden; only a few more oaks and chestnuts cut in the copse, yet within that time the fate of Ladysmith must be decided. Should help fail to reach it—and it may well prove impossible—what shall we see? what will the world see? what will our various enemies see? Only two alternatives appear to be open: an unbelievable surrender, and an only too easily believable slaughter. That last of course is the central thought, the unendurable one; the vision that hangs before one’s eyes day and night. Death upon those iron hills; death without the possibility of accomplishing anything; death under the most unendurable of conditions; shot helplessly, like the furred or the feathered beasts of a battue. I write it down deliberately, in the hope of thereby getting rid of it, for it haunts one unendurably. With that perversity, which makes us all at times our own most ingenious torturer, my mind revolves continually around the disaster before it comes, and fills up every detail with the most diabolical distinctness. “Fall of Ladysmith! Fall of Ladysmith! Destruction of the garrison!” It seems to reverberate along the roads; it presents itself upon every village hoarding, as a friend of mine saw it several times this winter upon those of the Paris boulevards. Before I open my paper in the morning it seems to be hidden under the folds, ready like an asp to spring out and poison me. At night I fall asleep to the thought of it, and in my dreams it performs wild and Weirtz-like antics, projecting itself in and out of them with all that monstrous reduplication which the besetting idea has a way of achieving for itself, when the brain that originated it is nominally asleep, and at peace.
London, February 16, 1900