To look back upon, it is all a wonderful dream-world of sunshine and flowers and beauty; but at the time, I did not really like Rome. In spite of the many charming people I met there, in spite of the associations of the past, and the daily beauty of the present, I did not enjoy living at Rome as a diplomat. There was a good deal to do at the Embassy, and not a large staff, and I only once went for an expedition that lasted more than one day. Besides which, a diplomat at Rome was caught in a net of small social duties, visits, days on which one had to call at the Embassies, cards to be left; one could not enjoy Rome freely. Besides which, I felt as if I were living in a cemetery, and I was oppressed by the army of ghosts in the air, the host of memories, so many crumbling walls and momentous ruins.
At the end of July, I went to Russia, and spent three weeks at Sosnofka, where the whole of the Benckendorff family and one of their cousins were staying. I could now understand Russian and read it without difficulty, and could talk enough to get on. I had come to the definite conclusion that I did not care for Diplomacy as a career. I did not think then, and I do not think now, that it is worse than any other career. “Il n’y a pas de sot métier,” and Diplomacy, like anything else, is what you make it. But unless your heart is in the work, unless you like it for its own sake, you will never make anything of it, and I did not like it. I wanted literary work.
My first step was to try and get back to England. I applied for a temporary exchange into the Foreign Office and got it. I went back to London in January 1903, and worked in the Foreign Office, in the Commercial Department, for the rest of that summer. In the autumn, I went to Russia once more, and spent most of my time translating a selection of Leonardo da Vinci’s _Thoughts on Art and Life_ for the Humanists’ Library, published by the Merrymount Press, Boston.
I wanted to devote myself to literature; but it was difficult to find an opening. I had little to show except a book of poems published in 1902, three articles in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, an article in the _Saturday Review_, and one in the _National Review_.