Chapter VII: A Summer in England, 1894

The first news that greeted me on my return to London from Egypt in the Spring of 1894 was the engagement of my friend Margot Tennant to Mr. Asquith, a political event, as it turned out, of the first magnitude, though perhaps not fully appreciated as such at the moment. I find it recorded thus:

“_1st May._—To Grosvenor Square, where I found Sir Charles Tennant very important over his daughter’s approaching marriage. ‘It has gone on now,’ he said, ‘for a year and a half, at first all on Asquith’s side, but now Margot is sincerely attached to him. She has smartened him up wonderfully, you would hardly know him.’ Upon which in walks Asquith, a little smooth-shaved middle-aged man, with a beatific smile on his face, as of one to whom Heaven’s doors have been opened. He reminded me very cordially of our former meetings on Home Rule platforms, and in answer to my congratulations, said, ‘Indeed you have reason to congratulate me.’ Sir Charles gives his daughter £2,000 a year and a house in Cavendish Square. They are to spend the honeymoon in Caroline Grosvenor’s house, 30, Upper Grosvenor Street, which they have rented for the season.

“_4th May._—George Wyndham came to see me. We discussed Rosebery, and agreed that he was overrated as a statesman, a clever after-dinner speaker, but nothing more. He had been pushed forward by the press and the Jews as a sort of Stock Exchange candidate, but he could not last as leader of a party. George applauded my intention of formally returning to the Conservative fold [a momentary intention never carried out, for I joined no party].

“_7th May._—Lunched with Sir William Harcourt. In spite of accounts of his ill-health I found him looking better than for a year or two. His budget comes on for second reading to-night (he was still Chancellor of the Exchequer), and Loulou told me in private that it is quite possible the Government may be beaten on it. Sir William was, nevertheless, in high spirits, and I think enjoyed my denunciation of Rosebery as ‘Minister of the Stock Exchange.’ Alfred Milner came in and we had some chaff, good-naturedly, about Egypt. Nubar has been playing his old games there already, giving a concession to a land company he is interested in. Milner admitted he was an old rogue. Afterwards in private Loulou told me that his father would probably retire from public life at the end of the present Parliament. He himself intends to do so as soon as the Budget is through.

“_10th May._—Margot’s wedding day, showery and cold, but with occasional gleams of sunshine. St. George’s crammed to the ceiling with the gayest world of the gay. It is the only church in London I have the smallest romance about, but to me it is interesting and touching from the vast number of marriages it has seen (including my own). It is old-fashioned, with nice comfortable pews, and none of the tawdry Gothic rubbish they are fond of elsewhere. De Staal was there in the same pew with us, and there were Rosebery and I believe all the Ministers, and Gladstone, who came in late and was cheered outside, and Arthur Balfour. Margot was pale, very pale, but firm and decided, Asquith much smartened up. A great crush in the Tennant house afterwards in Grosvenor Square, Margot surrounded by a crowd of women friends. She drove away in a slatey-blue dress, an apple-green straw hat and dark-blue flowers.

“_18th May._—In consequence of a talk I have had with Lady Lytton I have written to Arthur Ellis on the subject of the Khedive’s intended visit to England. In it I said: ‘When I was leaving Egypt the other day the Khedive, whom I went to take my leave of, spoke to me of his proposed visit to Europe, which was then not quite decided on, and asked me to find out for him confidentially whether if he came to England, his reception would be a really cordial one. By this he meant not so much whether there would be the usual official reception, whatever that might be, due to his rank, as whether he might count upon the kindly feeling of the Court and especially of the Prince of Wales towards him. From what I know of him I feel sure that it is more in the power of the Prince of Wales than of Lord Rosebery or of any of the officials to place things in Egypt, as far as the Khedive is concerned, on a more satisfactory footing than they have lately been. The Khedive is very suspicious of Lord Cromer, not as I think entirely without reason, for the quarrel between them is no doubt largely a personal one, and I think that, if it could be conveyed to him that he could count at least on a friendly reception at Marlborough House, he would be less likely to listen to the advances which are pretty sure to be made to him in Paris on his way through. In my opinion large political interests are involved in the issue of this visit.’

“To-day the tenantry of Crabbet presented Judith with a silver cup on her coming of age. They were most hearty, and recalled the fact of most of them holding their farms from father to son for generations. Judith made an admirable speech in reply, delivered in a clear voice and with a charming manner. Then I showed them some of the family deeds and they all drank champagne in tumblers. The leaders among them were the two Caffins and young Wright of Pryors Farm. The servants, too, at Crabbet are making her a presentation. We have, I think, seven house servants who have been over twenty years with us.

“_21st May._—An answer has come from Arthur Ellis with an informal message from the Prince of Wales. It is most satisfactory. He says: ‘Whilst the Prince of Wales feels some hesitation in sending any message to the Khedive except through the accredited official channel, I may say that should His Highness determine upon a visit to England, he will certainly receive from the Prince of Wales and from society in general every possible attention.’ I have written to the Khedive, conveying to him the message.”

This little piece of diplomacy I had afterwards reason to regret, successful as it proved in bringing the Khedive to England. The influence of Marlborough House was not a wholesome one for the Khedive’s patriotism, and in other ways proved detrimental, as will be seen later.

“_22nd May._—I see a report in the evening paper that the Sultan has forbidden the Khedive to go to England, but it sounds to me hardly likely.

“_24th May._—Breakfasted with Sir Henry Loch and had much talk with him about ‘civilization’ in Africa. He expressed his fear of the spread of Mohammedanism southwards as likely to prove a danger. I wish I could think it. He also asked about Arabia in a way which sounded as if they may have their eye on it, too, in the scramble that is going on. He told me the Chinese were driving the Russians back in Central Asia.

“Anne and Judith have taken rooms at 31, South Street for the season.

“_27th May (Sunday.)_—On Wednesday I called on Randolph Churchill in Grosvenor Square (his mother’s house) and had some political talk with him. He is terribly altered, poor fellow, having some disease, paralysis, I suppose, which affects his speech, so that it is painful to listen to him. He makes prodigious efforts to express himself clearly, but these are only too visible. He talked of his election prospects at Bradford and the desire of the Conservatives to delay the turning out of the Rosebery Government. About Egypt he said, ‘You know my opinion about evacuation is unchanged, but my tongue is tied.’” This was the last time I saw him. I remember that as he came to the door with me he tried again to explain to me what he wanted to tell me about Egypt, but broke down and said, almost in tears, “I know what I want to say, but damn it, I can’t say it.”

“_28th May._—Breakfast with George Wyndham. He is at last bringing out his book of French Lyrics. With any luck it should be a great success.

“_10th June (Sunday)._—To Wotton to see Evelyn, who is in poor health. He wants me to act in concert with him on the question of a new Conservative candidate for East Grinstead. On Thursday I met Frederic Harrison, just back from France. There is great excitement about the Anglo-Belgian Agreement in regard to the Congo and Upper Nile, the last of Rosebery’s thieves’ treaties, but Harrison says the wirepullers assure him that the French menace will come to nothing. I am not so sure, as it is being taken up in Germany also.

“_11th June._—Still at Wotton. After luncheon drove to Box Hill to see George Meredith. Found him with his daughter, a pretty little bar maiden just engaged to Russell Sturgis, and another young lady. He is terribly deaf and afflicted with creeping paralysis, so that he staggers from time to time while walking, and once to-day nearly fell. It does not, however, affect his mind, and he has a novel on hand at the present moment which keeps him writing six hours a day. He is a queer, voluble creature, with a play-acting voice, and his conversation like one dictating to a secretary, a constant search for epigrams. I took the bull by the horns at once about his novels, said I never read prose and looked upon him only as a poet. This pleased him, and he gave me two volumes, recommending to me especially the piece called ‘Attila.’ He told me Tennyson was the first person to discover the merits of ‘Love in a Valley.’ I asked him to explain sundry obscurities in ‘Modern Love,’ and he said he would do so if I would come up with him to a little literary den he has at the top of his garden, but the young ladies unfortunately followed us, and he was unwilling to talk about this poem before them, so I missed my chance. During our talk a luncheon was brought to him on a tray, as he said he was too busy to sit down to a regular meal, and could not write after one o’clock, so I left him to his work and drove on. I had driven my four horses in at the front entrance, a difficult feat, and got them out again and went on over the hill to Ockham, where I picked up Judith, and back in the evening again to Wotton over Ranmore Common and down the steep descent of Coombe Bottom. I fancy in all history no team of four horses was ever driven before down that road, not even by Tommy Onslow of happy memory, certainly not by a woman, for Judith had the reins.

“Compare the local rhyme, for Onslow lived close by:

What can Tommy Onslow do?

He can drive a coach and two,

Can Tommy Onslow do no more?

He can drive a coach and four.

Where shall we his merits fix?

He can drive a coach and six.

“_13th June._—Dr. Leitner called to talk over Egyptian and Mohammedan affairs. He is gloomy about prospects as I am in the East, where the old sympathy for Eastern things amongst Englishmen is fast dying out, and a reign of Western intolerance is taking its place. There is danger of a partition of the Ottoman dominions, for there is nowhere the smallest wish in Europe to see reform in them, and all Powers alike are in arms in Africa against the Mohammedan Arabs. This is for England and Germany a new feature and a dangerous one for Islam.

“_18th June._—Miss Violet Maxse’s wedding, an _omnium gatherum_, social, political, and literary. The bridegroom, Lord Salisbury’s third son, brought the Tories; Maxse, the Liberal Unionists, with Chamberlain and the rest; the young lady, her friends. I counted six poets in the church, including myself, Alfred Austin, George Meredith, Alfred Lyall, Oscar Wilde, and Edwin Arnold. I found myself next to Lyall, who told me the latest joke about the Laureateship. ‘If one must have a Laureate, choose the least of evils, choose Austin.’ At the bride’s house the crowd was immense, and I found myself for ten minutes flattened like a herring between Lord Salisbury and a tall Dutch clock. Truly matrimony makes strange pew fellows.

“_22nd June._—Gave a dinner at Mount Street to Lady Granby, Lucy Smith, d’Estournelles, Alfred Lyall, and Godfrey Webb, all of us more or less poets. After dinner we read and recited poetry, d’Estournelles being by far the most effective, having an admirable manner.

“I hear that Edward Malet is going to resign his Embassy at Berlin because he was not consulted on the Congo arrangement.

“_26th June._—Received a visit from M. Ducroix, Editor of the Paris ‘Matin.’ He asked me my opinion of the situation in Egypt, and I gave it him very frankly, and of French policy there. ‘French diplomacy,’ I said, ‘had made two capital mistakes, first in not supporting native as opposed to European interests, and, secondly, in making the perpetual opposition it does to our English policy without being prepared to fight.’ He said they were his own views. Reverseaux had to his own knowledge promised the Khedive to back him in the Spring of 1893 with a French fleet at Alexandria, and then had left him in the lurch. It was the fault of the home Government more than Reverseaux’s.

“_30th June and 1st July._—Our Annual Crabbet Club Meeting. The members present were:

George Wyndham,

George Curzon,

George Peel,

George Leveson Gower,

Esmé Howard,

St. George Lane Fox,

Eddy Tennant,

Hubert Howard,

Godfrey Webb,

Mark Napier,

Theobald Mathew,

Charles Gatty,

Laurence Currie,

with three new members, Lord Cairns, Alfred Douglas, and Basil Blackwood.

“_13th July._—Called on Frank Lascelles, who is just starting as Ambassador for St. Petersburg. We talked over old and new times. He and I were exact contemporaries, both in age and in the diplomatic service, and it is just thirty years ago that we were at Madrid together as _attachés_. Without any very special abilities he has made a rapid career by hard work and good sense. We talked of the Asiatic question and the Egyptian question. He does not believe in the possibility of saving any part of Persia from Russia, who could take it whenever she has a mind to. I walked with him to call on Staal, and left him at the door.

“_16th July._—To the Keats memorial meeting at Hampstead with George Wyndham, a curious ceremony. It took place in the parish church, the vicar and his choir assisting in surplices, but the proceedings were entirely mundane. Gosse, who presided, made a dull, platitudinous oration in the tone of a sermon (his father was a Nonconformist lecturer), and the others were even duller. Houghton alone was brief and to the point. The poet’s bust was then unveiled, and throughout the only allusion to religion was when one of the speakers enumerated what Keats was not, and included in the list that he was _not_ a religious propagandist. When all was over the worthy vicar consoled himself with some prayers and an anthem.

“_17th July._—A brilliant luncheon with Margot and her husband at 30, Upper Grosvenor Street, and I took her her Wedding Ode, which I had written for her amusement. The other guests were Mrs. Grenfell, Mrs. Daisy White, Ribblesdale, his brother Reggie Lister, and Oscar Wilde, all immensely talkative, so that it was almost like a breakfast in France. Asquith alone rather out of it. I sat next to him and was rather sorry for him, though he was probably happy enough. Afterwards, when the rest had gone away, Oscar remained, telling stories to me and Margot.”

This is a very poor account of an interesting, and in the sequel a tragic, incident which has remained strongly impressed on my mind, as it was one that showed Oscar Wilde at the height of his social glory, and as the last occasion on which I found myself in his company. Of all those present, and they were most of them brilliant talkers, he was without comparison the most brilliant, and in a perverse mood he chose to cross swords with one after the other of them, overpowering each in turn with his wit, and making special fun of Asquith, his host that day, who only a few months later, as Home Secretary, was prosecuting him on the notorious criminal charge which sent him to hard labour in prison. I remember, too, as a characteristic trait of his dandyism, that when at the end of the half hour we remained on talking, we went away together from the door, I to walk back to my rooms in Mount Street, and he to pay a visit in the same direction, hardly farther. I said, “We will walk together as far as Grosvenor Square.” “No, no,” he said, and called a passing hansom. “I _never_ walk.”

This was the end of my London season, and the only extracts I can find in my diary at all of a public character, which was otherwise devoted entirely to the social care of amusement and launching Judith in the world. It is a record especially of dinners that I gave, and which were for a moment rather the fashion with the Soul society at my rooms in Mount Street.

“_25th July._—Crabbet. With Judith on a pilgrimage to see Huxley at Eastbourne. He lives in a new house he has built near the cliff and with Beachy Head behind it. He was very cordial and pleasant, and his wife, an excellent old soul, most kind to Judith. We had only two hours with him but we talked all the time about the origin of the Arabian horse, and I think I got from him all the information he had to give. He said that in reality nothing was known at all clearly except that horses were unknown in Egypt under the fourth dynasty, that there had been a close connection with Arabia, and that if there had been horses in Arabia there would have been horses also in Egypt, but how they eventually came to Arabia was mere guesswork. Arabia had doubtless been in former times well watered, and it was possible a wild horse might have been isolated there in the South (this was my suggestion) long after the drying up of the northern plateaux, but the historical evidence, such as there was, was against it. We might expect something from the cuneiform records when thoroughly examined. Piétrement’s theories were merely speculative.

“Of the human race in Egypt he said that he had long suspected a common origin for them with the Dravidians of India, perhaps a long belt of brown-skinned men from India to Spain in very early days. Of savage races, he said he had no sympathy with them; he considered there was more difference between the man of the criminal class in London at the present day and the high type of educated thinker, than between the Australian savage and, say, the average man of the time of Elizabeth. ‘Yet,’ I objected, ‘I suppose you could educate your young criminal into being a bishop.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘a bishop would be easy enough because the other bishops would look after him, but not a country parson, that would be a dangerous experiment.’ He was surprised to learn that grey Arab horses were not foaled grey.

“_6th Aug._—A party at Crabbet for Sunday. The Meynells, George Wyndham, Alfred Douglas, and Blanche Wortley. Coventry Patmore, Henley, and Locker could not come. Meynell told us much that was interesting about Francis Thompson, who is the latest discovered of the poets.

“Thompson’s history is most curious. He was educated at Ushaw, and his father wanted him to become a doctor, but he had a distaste for it and could not or would not pass his examinations. This led to a quarrel, for the father had married a second time, and Thompson was turned out of the house, or left it in anger. He came to London, where he fell into extreme poverty, walking the streets as a beggar for five years and sleeping under the arches by the Thames. The money he earned he spent on opium, which drugged him to endurance of his life. Nevertheless, he once attempted suicide, spending what remained to him on a large dose of laudanum enough to kill two men. He divided it into two portions and retired to I forget what cemetery in the city and took the first half—whereupon he had a vision in which he saw Chatterton, who took him by the hand and comforted him, and reminded him how the very morning after his suicide a letter had come from a publisher which would have relieved him. So he did not take the second dose, and recovered to find the dream fulfilled by the arrival precisely of a letter from a friend enclosing him the cutting of one of his poems printed by Meynell in ‘Merrie England.’ Thompson had been in the habit of writing poems on any scraps of paper he could pick up and had sent several of them to Meynell, and among them a paper on Paganism and Christianity, which Meynell had pigeon-holed and forgotten till six months later, when he read them and found them excellent. Then he had tried to get into communication with Thompson, but had lost trace of him and had published the papers in hope of attracting the author’s attention. This succeeded, and Thompson, seeing his writings in print, wrote Meynell an angry letter about it, giving the address of a chemist’s shop near Charing Cross. Thither Meynell went, and on inquiry was told that Thompson owed a bill there of four shillings for opium, that he had no abode, but might be found at nights in the street in front of Charing Cross Station.

“Through the intervention of the chemist he was eventually discovered and sent to Meynell’s house apparently with but few weeks to live, for he was dying of opium. Meynell wanted him to go to a hospital, but at first he refused on account of a girl with whom he had a friendship in the streets. She had been kind to him, just as had been the case with De Quincy, and Thompson refused to go anywhere where he should be unable to see her. But the girl insisted that he should go to the hospital, and when he came out of it cured she had disappeared. I asked Meynell whether it was not a case of love rather than friendship, but he said: ‘No. Thompson told me that it was not so, that in his condition there could have been no question of physical love; he was too constantly starved.’ Thus Thompson was saved. He has now for the last year been sent to Pantasaph, the Capuchin monastery, where he is taken care of and kept away from drugs. He writes poetry and prose and has no other occupation. Meynell will bring him here one day. He showed us a fine poem of his still in manuscript, entitled ‘Amphicypellon,’ which he will have printed privately.”

This was followed by a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon, which I had long intended, and which I now accomplished, going by road with my four horses, and taking my cousin Alfred Douglas with me, stopping at several friends’ houses on our way, Lady Hayter’s at South Hill, and Dr. Watney’s at Buckholt, and Mr. Harvey’s at Woodstock. Then across the Wolds by Chipping Norton to Stanway, where we were amongst relations, and so on, two days later, to Stratford. Of this I write:

“_13th Aug._—All the way to Stratford there are lovely villages, houses of the seventeenth century built of stone, with stone roofs, people harvesting magnificent crops, but it is a thing to remark that in all this country, north of the Wiltshire and Oxfordshire downs there is no single common, or bit of waste land where a traveller might pitch his tent. Stratford itself is a very pretty town, standing on a fine, clear river, with little that is modern about it, marred only by the monstrous Shakespeare memorial, a Victorian building, perhaps the most degraded in architecture of our graceless age. Here Alfred left me in a hurry to return to London, while I stayed on fulfilling the object of my pilgrimage by reading the Sonnets at the poet’s tomb.

“Sitting on the chancel steps and in full view of the monument with the poet’s portly bust and its inscription, a new light broke on me with regard to his character, and I seemed to see him with less mystery, the full fed prosperous citizen he doubtless was in his later years, affecting gentility and honoured of his neighbours. The truth is there is nothing really more romantic in a poet than in other men when seen at home. The original cast of his face they show in Shakespeare’s house, said to have been taken after death, shows him a strong practical man, not over refined, one who at the present day would have been a successful journalist and man of letters. The Shakespeare of the Sonnets does not appear in this bust, rather the playwright and ready writer of dialogue for the stage. I can imagine him in this year of grace, 1894, figuring as a George Augustus Sala, or a Druriolanus in the London literary and dramatic world. Fortunately he was born 300 years ago.[11]

“On my way home I stopped at Kelmscott, where after dinner we played at twenty questions, the things chosen for our guessing being the white horse of White Horse Hill, the pen Chaucer wrote the first line of the Canterbury Tales with, and the American volume of Rossetti’s ‘House of Life,’ which Morris gave his wife. It is always a pleasure to find Rossetti still a living memory in this house.

“_16th Aug._—Made a late start as I dawdled on talking with Morris, and trying to prove to him that he and Ruskin had done more harm than good by their attempt to make English people love beauty and decorate their architecture. He defended himself good-humouredly, but I think has doubts, nevertheless, for we are engulfed to-day in a slough of ornament. I maintained that the old-fashioned square cardboard box style was less abominable, as were the days when it was considered bad taste to attempt any kind of prettiness. However at noon I got away and drove in floods of rain to Uffington, and up the face of White Horse Hill. There the sun came out, and I pitched my tent under lee of the ancient camp where there was a splendid crop of grass for the horses, and stopped for the night. There was a full moon, and it was bitter cold. Morris declares the White Horse to be a work of the Stone Age, probably 20,000 years old. In the night my horses, which I had tethered to the carriage pole, broke loose and wandered away, and I had a long run after them in the moonlight during which I crossed the old white chalk one, without finding mine, but it is hard to track horses on the grass, and we could do nothing till daylight, and not much then. In the course of the morning they were fortunately brought back by some farm people who had found them grazing two miles away. We then

“_17th Aug._—Followed the Ridgeway, a rough grass track along the crest of the down as far as near Lyddington Castle, when, striking a high road, we turned left and came to Aldbourne, and so to the Kennet river and Savernake Forest, where just before sunset we camped under one of the beech avenues, a lovely spot, dry and secluded, except for the wandering fallow deer. To-night we bivouacked, there being no sign of rain. It was my birthday of fifty-four, yet I feel little of the cares of age.

“_18th Aug._—Away before seven driving across the forest, which is splendid. Near its centre stands a column with the following inscription of supreme grandiloquence:

This column was erected

by Thomas Bruce Earl of Ailesbury

as a testimony

of gratitude

to his ever honoured uncle

Charles Earl of Ailesbury and Elgin

who left him these Estates

and procured for him the Barony of Tottenham;

and of loyalty

to his most Gracious Sovereign

George III

who unsolicited conferred upon him

the honour of an Earldom,

but above all

of Piety

To GOD FIRST HIGHEST BEST

whose blessing consecrateth every gift

and fixeth its true value

MDCCLXXXI

“On the other side is a second inscription hardly less amusing:

In commemoration

of

a signal instance of Heaven’s protecting Providence

OVER THESE KINGDOMS

in the year 1789

by restoring to perfect health

from a long and afflicting disorder

their excellent and beloved Sovereign

GEORGE THE THIRD

This tablet was inscribed

by

GEORGE BRUCE EARL OF AILESBURY

“After Savernake we came down into the Avon valley at Pewsey, and followed the river on to Amesbury where we baited, and so later to Stonehenge where we camped about half a mile from the stones under lee of a small plantation. The stones I found in possession when I arrived of American tourists, but even these could do little to injure the fine calm of the place, and they were soon gone, and about midnight I returned and went again in full solitude to the stones and spent an hour there alone, making incantations in the hope of raising some ghost of ancient times, but in vain, and though I repeated the Lord’s Prayer backwards, nothing would come. Perhaps it was the fact that in order to do so without a book I had first to repeat each sentence in its natural sequence, and this may have neutralized the spell. Then I lay down under one of the fallen blocks and dozed off for an hour or two, but still nothing. Stonehenge has much in common with primitive Egypt.

“_19th Aug. (Sunday)._—Moved eight miles on to Quarly Hill, and camped to the west of it. All this plain must once have been heath with scattered juniper bushes, for every here and there on the poorer land, as here and at Stonehenge, there are heath and juniper patches left. It is the modern sheep grazing that has brought the grass.

“Called on Major Poore who lives at Middlecote, close by, and dined with him. He is Urquhart’s last disciple and still preaches his doctrines. They have elected him a County Councillor, and he is organizing his district on a system of his own, and teaching the villagers to live according to the Chinese idea of domestic socialism. He is doing good, or at any rate is very happy in the thought that he is doing so. He talked much of Urquhart and his personal charm. We passed to-day close by Wilbury, which is sacred in my recollection on account of Percy and Madeline Wyndham, whose home it was for so many years.

“_20th Aug._—I am running homewards now, a long day’s march, by a grass road to Stockbridge, and thence to Winchester. I was determined to re- visit the scene of my old slave days at Twyford School.” This I accomplished, but the account of it in my diary is too long and too personal for insertion here. Another two days, _22nd August_, brought me home to Crabbet, making up 345 miles by road in the fifteen days and a half of my pilgrimage.

Visits to Saighton and Cumloden occupy the rest of my diary of this summer of 1894, but it contains nothing of any political consequence. On _29th September_ I write:

“I am preparing for a long departure from England, which may be for years and may be for ever, for I am in the mood for farewells. In public matters there has been the war between Japan and China. My sympathies are with Japan, because her victory will mean a check put to European expansion in that quarter of the globe, and an encouragement to Orientals everywhere to arm themselves and fight against it. Old- fashioned China is a colossus, with feet of clay, interesting, but doomed if it does not put its house in order, somewhat on European lines. The Japanese stand towards China much as Arabi and the Liberal party in Egypt stood towards Turkey twelve years ago. The defeat of Japan by China would have meant immediate European interference in Japan’s affairs.

“I am leaving home for Gros Bois, Tunis, and Egypt, and am making arrangements to stay abroad over next summer, but I promise nothing to myself. Anne and Judith will meet me in Egypt in the middle of November, that is far enough ahead for my hopes to look, and so to Crabbet I bid a long good-bye. I shall perhaps never go back to it as my home, for I have plans of making Newbuildings my Sussex home instead. We are so much abroad, that so large a house and establishment are thrown away on us. Newbuildings would fulfil all our purposes.”

My usual autumn visit to Gros Bois lasted till 18th October. While there, there is one entry worth transscribing:

“_14th Oct. (Sunday)._—To Paris for the day and breakfasted with General Faverot. He had with him General Descharmes, a young M. de Sivry (a grandson, Wagram tells me, of the Duke of Brunswick), and a son of General Fleury. Descharmes talked much of Japan, where he was military instructor for some years, and in glowing terms of their success in the war with China. He declares them to have _le diable dans le corps_ for fighting, and that it would take a European Power all it knew to beat them. ‘I would not,’ he said, ‘undertake to land an army in Japan with less than 60,000 men, all Frenchmen.’”