Talking of the Rockies reminds me (did I need reminding) of Elsie Northcote, my dear friend, who married and went to live there. The other night some friends of mine gave me a little "send-off" before I left London—dinner and the Palace Theatre, where I felt like a ghost returned to earth. All the old lot were there as of yore—Viola Tree, Lady Diana Manners, Harry Lindsay, the Raymond Asquiths, etc., etc. I saw them all from quite far away. Lord Stanmore was in the box with us, and he it was who told me of Elsie Northcote's sudden death. It wasn't the right place to hear about it. Too many are gone or are going. My own losses are almost stupefying; and something dead within myself looks with sightless eyes on death; with groping hands I touch it sometimes, and then I know that I am dead also.
LOVE AND PAIN
There is only one thing that one can never renounce, and that is love. Love is part of one, and can't be given up. Love can't be separated from one, even by death. It comes once and remains always. It is never fulfilled; the fulfilment of love is its crucifixion; but it lives on for ever in a passion-week of pain until pain itself grows dull; and then one wishes one had been born quite a common little soul, when one would probably have been very happy.
28 October.—We arrived at midnight last night at Petrograd. Ian Malcolm was at the hotel, and had remained up to welcome us. To-day we have been unpacking, and settling down into rather comfortable, very expensive rooms. My little box of a place costs twenty-six shillings a night. We lunched with two Russian officers and Mr. Ian Malcolm, and then I went to the British Embassy, where the other two joined me. Sir George Buchanan, our Ambassador, looks overworked and tired. Lady Georgina and I got on well together....
The day wasn't quite satisfactory, but one must remember that a queer spirit is evoked in war-time which is very difficult of analysis. Primarily there is "a right spirit renewed" in every one of us. We want to be one in the great sacrifice which war involves, and we offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies in great causes, only to find that there is some strange unexplained quality of resistance meeting us everywhere.
Mary once said to me in her quaint way, "Your duty is to give to the Queen's Fund as becomes your position, and to get properly thanked."
This lady-like behaviour, combined with cheque-writing on a large scale, is always popular. It can be repeated and again repeated till cheque-writing becomes automatic. Then from nowhere there springs a curious class of persons whom one has never heard of before, with skins of invulnerable thickness and with wonderful self-confidence. They claim almost occult powers in the matter of "organisation," and they generally require pity for being overworked. For a time their names are in great circulation, and afterwards one doesn't hear very much about them. Florence Nightingale would have had no distinction nowadays. It is doubtful if she would have been allowed to work. Some quite inept person in a high position would have effectually prevented it. Most people are on the offensive against "high-souled work," and prepared to put their foot down heavily on anything so presumptuous as heroism except of the orthodox kind, and even the right kind is often not understood.
There is a story I try to tell, but something gets into my throat, and I tell it in jerks when I can.
FOOTBALL UNDER FIRE
It is the story of the men who played football across the open between the enemy's line of trenches and our own when it was raked by fire. When I had finished, a friend of mine, evidently waiting for the end of a pointless story, said, "What did they do that for?" (Oh, ye gods, have pity on men and women who suffer from fatty degeneration of the soul!)