The satisfactions of intercourse are apt to be overrated, yet there are
times when they are certainly not without their uses. Living for the
moment alone--if anyone can be said to be alone who possesses a few good
neighbours, and one kind dog--I find myself in an oddly dualistic
condition of mind. In bodily presence I am here at H----, engaged in
sundry important avocations. I am path making; copse cutting; plant
protecting; I am even bricks-and-mortar superintending in a small way.
To my own private consciousness I am really engaged in quite another set
of preoccupations, and a very long way from these green downs, and
rustling oak copses of ours. The experience does not pretend to be
particularly original, seeing that a large number of other people’s
experience would probably just now bear it out. Solitude however
emphasises these sort of odd dualities, and endows them with an air of
greater distinction. Are mortals better and wiser, or worse and more
foolish when they are alone?
The wisdom of the ages has hitherto declined to answer that question, a
fact which probably proves its wisdom. Better or not, one thing is at
least certain, and that is that they are extremely different. “Men
descend to meet,” says Emerson, and he may be right. I am inclined
myself however to think that that profundity, that peculiar mental
greatness of which, like others, I am perfectly conscious when I am
alone, is less a solid than a gaseous greatness; a sort of exaltation,
dependent for the most part upon the fact of there being no one to
contradict me. We are all of us at all times microcosms, but never are
we so completely microcosms as when we are quite by ourselves. Then we
seem to swell into a perfectly multitudinous host, all the members of
which exhibit a singular unanimity, and moreover a touching desire to
endorse our own views, however often these may contradict one another!
Like many other honest-minded civilians, my thoughts have of late been
considerably taken up with schemes of amateur strategy. The plans of
campaign that I have formulated in the course of the last two months
would have puzzled Von Moltke, and might even have gone far to surprise
Napoleon! If I have not forwarded any of them to our Generals in South
Africa it has been mainly because I felt that it might be kinder to
allow them to go on in their own way without any assistance of mine. I
heard lately of someone, by the way, who actually had telegraphed out
her recommendations to Sir Redvers Buller. As the story reached me the
telegram took this form: “Please try to relieve Ladysmith.” I hope for
the credit of human nature that the tale is true, but if so there is a
simple innocence about this form of admonition of which I fear that I
should have been personally quite incapable. My own ideas, my own forms
of suggestion, are entirely different. They are large, nay grandiose,
and moreover they are extremely intricate. As I walk about over these
lanes and downs I see strategical possibilities in all directions, which
cause me to thrill over the magnitude of my own conceptions.
Towards evening, especially, the sense of what might be,--of what, for
aught anyone can say to the contrary, still may be,--rises almost
palpably; a beckoning ghostly phantom of the Great Coming Invasion.
Dorking--that scene of crushing British disaster--is not far off; were I
to clamber up the opposite ridge I should be looking down on it.
Moreover, between one landscape and another the difference becomes much
less when all detail is reduced to one vast blur. I have a friendly
knoll upon which I sometimes take my stand towards sunset hour, and from
which I have of late conjured up Biggars-bergs, inaccessible and
kopje-covered as heart could desire. It is true that the enemy holding
them is absolutely invisible, but then so he probably would be in any
case. Evening has moreover in my experience an odd power of loosening
the tie of the actual. The mind seems to be less fixed to its shell than
in the earlier, and more garish hours of the day. As the shadows
lengthen stronger and stronger becomes the impression that the world is
after all but a small place, and that the scenes that one is thinking of
are nearly, if not quite, as close as those that one is actually looking
at. Thought flits over the wave-crests between this and South Africa
more lightly than one of Mother Carey’s chickens, and alights dry-shod
upon the veldt. One is amongst them. One is standing in the midst of
them. One can see, literally all but see, that tattered, sunburnt,
rather dilapidated-looking host--friends, cousins, kinsfolk; countrymen
and fellow-subjects at all events. How odd you all look, dear friends,
and yet how familiar! Big English frames, shrewd Scotch faces, tender,
devil-may-care Irish hearts. Surely one knows you? Surely you are very
near to us, disguise yourselves as you may? The setting may be new, the
remoteness considerable, but neither setting nor remoteness can hinder
one from feeling at home in the midst of you!