My list appears to be a longer one than I thought. I have as yet only reached the N’s, yet my energies have quite come to an end for the present. I will put off the remainder of it therefore for a day or two.
June 8, 1900
I HAD intended going doggedly on this morning with the list of our seed-sowings, but another impulse has come, and the sowings must stand over for the moment. Something in the look of to-day’s sky and earth—a brand new earth after last night’s rain—has brought a new, and a most unlooked-for wave of exhilaration to my mental shores, and the visitation is just now too rare and comforting not to be met half way with the keenest of hospitality.
“Life is a flux of moods,” and to the fluctuations of those moods there is assuredly no limit. If we are eternally surprised by our own limitations, our own torpidity and dullness, there are also—and for this heaven be thanked—some possibilities of surprise upon the other side, and that for the oldest, the saddest, the least alert amongst us. A hundred hours of intolerable dullness and stagnation pass over our heads. Then comes the hundred and first, and lo! the dull brain wakes, and the deaf ear hears. A new perception of the unperceived relationship of things; a new perception of the invisible splendours lying unnoticed around us, becomes for the moment almost startlingly visible. Such hours are the only really countable ones, the chief solace of existence, the one clear reason, one is tempted to say, of our poor encumbered, stunted little lives. For their sakes, if for no other reason, it were well worth the trouble of being born, and of all the aches and ills that belong to that very singular estate; worth our meeting gallantly, if possible merrily, the thousand petty pinpricks, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the occasional alienation of those one loves best, nay—if it must be so—even the fell assaults of Giant Despair and all his abominable brood.
For the suggestiveness of what lies about us is no mere fancy, but is absolutely real; real as the light upon yonder tree-tops; real as the sorrow in our hearts; real as the love that makes all things endurable; real as the death which puts an end to pain. At this very moment, now passing over my head, there is lying about me—close to my eyes, could I but discern it—the materials alike of the loftiest poetry, and of the most riddle-solving science. Disregarded and unheeded there they lie, ready alike for the greatest singer in his happiest mood, for the most era-making of discoverers, nay, for aught I can tell to the contrary, for the seer, the saint, and the prophet in their hours of highest, and most God-inspired contemplation.
For the raw materials of inspiration are eternally at hand, only invisibly. They are as present here this morning as they ever were; present in the earth and its green things; in the common face of day; in the comings and goings of the clouds, and of men; in the changes of the sky, and of our own poor lives. The light that is gilding yonder cumulus is as capable of inspiring great thoughts here to-day in a Surrey copse, as ever it was in Delphi, or in Argos, or in Jerusalem. It may awaken just as resounding emotions, it may inspire just as great deeds to the hearts of yonder passers-by in a dogcart, as it did to the Assailants of Troy, or to the Seekers of the Golden Fleece. The constituents of all greatness, of all poetry, heroism, and sanctity are for ever amongst us. It is only the right recipients of them that are alas! so scanty.
And yet, even though we are not quite the right recipients, it is well for us that such gleams come. Who shall say that an existence which is capable of being even thus temporarily lifted above itself is not for that very reason a goodly and a desirable one? What proportion of discomfort, what proportion even of sheer pain, of numbing weakness, of crushing sorrow were not worth enduring so long as one knew—knew as a matter of absolute certainty—that they would be now and again pierced by gleams of such celestial potency? The hard thing, and the thing that for all mortals will always be hardest to bear patiently, is—not the uncertainty even—so much as the desperate transitoriness of such visitations. Almost before we have time to see and to confer with them, our enchanting visitors have spread out their gauzy wings, and have vanished beyond recall. They are gone, but where they are gone to, or when they will next revisit us we have not the faintest notion. Ariel and Titania have disappeared into the abyss, but Caliban and Bottom on the contrary remain permanently behind, and are continually at our elbows. At this very moment, and while I am still thinking about it, the light is shifting rapidly. The day has grown older; more crowded. A thousand bloated nothings have sprung up like so many fungi in the path. Shadows, slight, but impenetrable, have gathered over the foreground. My own mood too has shifted, and what a while ago seemed so clear has grown fainter and fainter, and seems to be upon the point of disappearing altogether. The good little hour has passed!
July 7, 1900
ONCE more the great outside tide of life has beaten down the little barricades that one erects against it, and has come thundering in over them in an avalanche, tossing them to right and left, as though they were so many straws in its path! This week that has just ended has been for millions—for all Europe, for the whole world in fact—stamped with the impress of what one would fain still hope to be an incredible horror. Personally this Pekin nightmare has centred itself for me in the fact that E. B. was reported to be still there. Recently she was known to have been there, and whether she had, or had not left seemed at first impossible to ascertain. At last, though not until after days of suspense, of uncertainty, of growing hopelessness, came the telegram—“Safe at Hong Kong,” and the relief is greater than it is easy, without exaggeration, to put into words.
So great has been that relief that for me it has perceptibly altered the whole situation, as I suppose it was inevitable that it should do. Nevertheless, the tragedy as a tragedy remains, and if anything seems to be deepening daily. The newspapers certainly do nothing to minimise it; perhaps they would say that it was hardly their province to do so! Such headings, however, as “The Chinese Cawnpore!” “Last shots reserved for the women!” “White children carried on spears!” seem to be rather more than it is their absolute duty to offer to their readers! As regards hope, no one appears to have any left, so that it seems mere optimism to cherish any. A ray reached us two days ago from our neighbour S. B., who had heard of a reassuring telegram from someone in Sir R. Hart’s employment in Pekin. No such gleam, however, seems to have travelled down to the murky depths of our newspapers, so that one can only fear that there must be some mistake.