Chapter XIII: Omdurman and Fashoda (2)

“_5th July._—Percy Wyndham, who has been down to see me, tells me that he had spent the afternoon with Burne-Jones two days before he died. Burne-Jones was in the highest possible spirits, playing at ‘Bear’ with Pamela’s children. Later, however, a friend had dined with him, to whom he had talked gloomily of the prospects of the world and of the human race. The friend had remarked that no one should have such pessimistic views who was not an atheist. To which Burne-Jones had exclaimed, ‘Thank God, we are not that.’ He had been taken ill suddenly in the night, and had died in half-an-hour. With Madeline, too, I have had much conversation about Burne-Jones. She had written me a beautiful letter about him and Morris, and had asked me to write a sonnet for her about them. ‘I should like it better,’ she says in it, ‘than anything else you could possibly do for me, and you are the only person almost who could, if even you can, and I will wait no matter how long for it, and if I depart from this life from pure old age while waiting, well, I shall hope that then I shall be even better able to appreciate it in my future and next development than now. But, for the sake of the world, a sonnet, something beautiful about them, ought to be written. Such writings act as beautiful reflectors to the divine light (that immortals such as those two were) have left to the world, in the beauty of their work, it directs the eyes of those that knew them not, to see and know them, for the world in some ways is so dark that even the Divine Light needs a reflector or glasses to guide the eyes, the spiritual eyes, darkened eyes I had rather say, for it is the darkened eyes in the human race, not the darkened world that prevents them seeing and knowing the glorious divine light and beauty that is in this world, only few see it, either in Nature or Art. Some are blind, hopelessly blind, others have films on their eyes, but they can be removed. At first they only see trees as men walking, but finally they can see, see and so live, but they at first require glasses and reflectors, and artificial means of help, and, to my mind, Poetry can be and is the art of all others that helps us most in this world to see. Each divine art acts as a guide and reflector to the other; Poetry helps Music, Music Poetry, both cast light and concentrate it on the other arts.’ This suggested the sonnet I have since published, and which begins; ‘Mad are we all, maids, men, young fools alike and old.’

“_15th July._—Wotton. I find Evelyn with strong Spanish sympathies in the war that is going on, on the same grounds with mine. The papers announce the news of the surrender of Santiago de Cuba on honourable terms, and there is great talk of peace being made, but I doubt its being near. Spain has less to lose than America by going on with the war, her colonies being practically already gone, and Europe being almost certain to prevent a Yankee invasion of Spain. The financiers who inspire the Press call out however, for it, and would have it made at any price, as it is injuring trade.

“_2nd August._—Bismarck is dead. My only personal recollection of him is of meeting him at old Lord Brougham’s in Grafton Street. Lady Malet, who was Brougham’s stepdaughter, some say his natural daughter, asked me to tea alone, to meet him, and he came and stopped talking with us very pleasantly for an hour. He had been an old admirer of Lady Malet’s when they had been together diplomatically at Frankfort, and they were still on very intimate terms. This may have been in 1862. My memory of him is of a tall rather thin man, with agreeable manners, and talking English perfectly. At that time somewhat of an Anglomane, he was still unrecognized by the general public of Europe as a great statesman. Indeed, he was laughed at in Germany for his reactionary, out-of-date opinions, and was not a little unpopular with the masses. If he had failed to win at Sadowa, he would certainly have been torn to pieces by the Berlin mob. Lady Malet had always the fullest faith in his genius.

“_9th September._—On Monday the 6th news came of the defeat of the Khalifa and the taking of Omdurman, and with it of Hubert Howard’s death, my only friend there and almost the only one on our side to lose his life. The slaughter of the Dervishes seems to have been premeditated and ruthlessly carried out. When I was at Bramber the other day Button told me that ‘a heavy butcher’s bill’ had been ordered, as it was intended to make the avenging of Gordon a chief feature of the business. Telegraphic communication with England was on this account stopped (the excuse being that the wires had been broken by a storm) lest any order of moderation should come, and as far as I can read the despatches since received, there must have been a wholesale massacre of the wounded and fugitives. The figures given to-day are ten thousand counted corpses, sixteen thousand wounded, who have crawled away to the river or the desert, and three hundred or four hundred more killed in the town of Omdurman after the fight, and only three thousand to four thousand prisoners!!! As Button told me, ‘the performances of Tommy Atkins in the way of killing at Atbara (a few days before the fight at Omdurman), passed everything ever heard of. He was like a raging wild beast.’ One may be pretty sure that orders were given to spare none.

“All this has moved my bile to the point that I have written in protest to the ‘Times,’ but I doubt if they will print my letter. The whole country, if one may judge by the Press, has gone mad with the lust of fighting glory, and there is no moral sense left in England to which to appeal. It is hideous but unmistakable.

“Hubert’s death is pitiful. There was nothing in the world to take him there, for he was not in the army, nothing but a boyish whim. He dined with Anne and Judith in London almost the night before he started, and told them he was determined to fight. He was a delightful boy, with a ringing, merry laugh it did one good to hear, and he had considerable abilities, and the best of hearts, and he ends in a blind alley of Omdurman a paid servant of the ‘Times.’

“_10th September._—My letter to the ‘Times’ is printed, which is more than I expected. I am curious to see whether it raises an echo anywhere, but as yet no voice has spoken in any London paper, except that Miss Gordon protests in her brother’s name against his being ‘revenged.’ A queer Christian country ours! On the other hand there has been an outbreak in Crete, a Moslem mob has risen against a party of English marines sent by the Admiral to raise the custom dues, and some have been killed, and the British Vice-Consulate has been burnt, and Cretan Christians massacred, Edhem Pasha and the Turkish garrison looking on.”

One characteristic letter was written to me at this time, apparently by a parson; it says, “By a curious coincidence an answer to your letter in the ‘Times’ of yesterday is given in one of the Psalms for this morning’s service, viz., Psalm lviii, verses 10-11: ‘The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance; he shall wash his footsteps in the blood of the ungodly, so that a man shall say, Verily, there is a reward for the righteous, doubtless there is a God that judgeth the earth.” A more important letter, however, was to follow from no less a personage than Herbert Spencer. Spencer was not at the time known to me personally, nor had I at that time ranked myself among his disciples, and the letter came to me as a surprise. It reached me 4th October.

“_4th Oct._—A most interesting letter has come to me from Herbert Spencer on the subject of my letter about Omdurman, and mentioning also an article on my poem, ‘The Wind and the Whirlwind.’ [This article, I afterwards learned, was by Francis Thompson.] Spencer has long looked out, he says, for a poet who should write a poem, the main lines of which he sketches in his letter and he asks me to undertake it. (It was to be a dialogue in Heaven after the manner of Goethe’s ‘Faust,’ between God and Satan, Satan complaining that mankind has surpassed him in wickedness, sacrificing to Thor and Odin while nominally sacrificing to Jehovah.) I wish I could think myself capable of doing this with any effect, but I am too hopeless of getting such a subject listened to at the present moment and too little believing in the divine government of the world.”

This led to a correspondence between me and the philosopher and eventually to my undertaking to write a poem, “Satan Absolved,” more or less on the lines suggested. In a second letter, dated 6th October, Spencer writes: “My beliefs are pretty much as pessimistic as those you express. . . . Did I think that men would remain in the far future anything like what they now are I should contemplate with equanimity the sweeping away of the whole human race.” [For the first letter see Appendix III.]

“_12th Oct._—A visit from Mrs. Meynell and her husband, and Francis Thompson at Newbuildings. I had invited them to come for the night, but Meynell had explained that this was impossible, ‘the poet (Thompson), having an inconvenient habit of setting his bed on fire.’ They came down, however, for the day. I met them at the station, a very lovely day, and as we drove through the woods Meynell pointed out to me that ‘the poet of nature’ was wholly absorbed in the ‘Globe’ newspaper he had brought down with him in the train, such being the way with London poets. Thompson, though born in Lancashire and speaking English with a broad provincial accent, is a true Cockney. He is a little weak-eyed, red-nosed young man of the degenerate London type, with a complete absence of virility and a look of raptured dependence on Mrs. Meynell which is most touching. He is very shy, but was able to talk a little when the general conversation was not too loud, and he seems good- hearted and quite unpretending. He has written no poetry, Meynell tells me, now for some years, being cured of his morphia. But Meynell thinks the fountain may some day break forth again. Meanwhile, he gets a living by literary criticism in the ‘Academy’ and other journals. When we all went out after luncheon to the woods, I found him quite ignorant of the names of the commonest trees, even the elm, which he must have seen every day in London. I pointed one out to him, and he said, ‘I think, a maple.’ On the whole, however, I liked him, for he was quite simple and straightforward. Only, it was difficult to think of him as capable of any kind of strength in rhyme or prose. Meynell has greatly improved conversationally with years, and has become a most agreeable man. Thanks to him, the visit was a pleasant one and they all went home in spirits.

“_15th Oct._—All this week has been one of excitement over the quarrel with France about Fashoda. A Blue Book has been published giving the English case, and, imperial plunder being in question, all parties, Tories, Whig, Radical, Churchmen, and Nonconformist have joined in publicly extolling English virtue and denouncing the French. For myself I see nothing in it more respectable than the wrangle of two highwaymen over a captured purse, morally both sides are on a level. The English position in the case is that there has long been a scheme of appropriating the Soudan with all the Upper Nile to the Lakes—this, in anticipation of the event which must some day happen, of the British occupation of Egypt proper coming to an end, through European intervention. The scheme has so far been disguised, and whenever objection has been raised, the Egyptian claim to the old Soudan provinces has been put forward and, as we have seen, the Egyptian army has been made use of to do the rough work of re-conquest, only now and then have there been indications given of the truth. In the present Blue Book there is one where Lord Salisbury instructs Monson to declare at Paris that ‘By the military events of last week all the territories which were subject to the Khalifa passed, _by right of conquest_, to the British and Egyptian Government.’ Yet all the _gobemouche_ press is ringing the changes on our ‘legality.’ And what a strange plea of legality as towards Egypt! What would be said in private life if a guardian and trustee who had undertaken to manage the estate of a minor, as we forced the Egyptian Government in 1884 to abandon the Soudan and leave it derelict, and then, the opportunity having occurred, should take possession of those derelict farms as belonging to nobody and should do this with the approval of the whole world, moral and religious! Yesterday, there was a great public meeting in favour of universal peace, and our leading Nonconformists on the platform applauded Lord Salisbury for having thus swindled Egypt and defied France. We live in an odd age.

“Judith’s engagement to Neville Lytton was announced to-day.

“_16th Oct._—I think very seriously of the crisis between England and France. It will likely enough lead to a war, for both sides being in the wrong each naturally sees the other’s wickedness and so believes itself right. The best road to an agreement between them would be that each should give up its preposterous claim to the Nile Provinces. Lord Salisbury, among his many reasons for renewing the Soudan campaign three years ago, said that the destruction of the Khalifa’s power would make it easier for England to evacuate Egypt. Let him keep that part of his programme and France will be satisfied. Our people, however, want war, fancying it is a favourable moment for dealing single-handed with France. I hope we shall not be invaded in Sussex.

“_17th Oct._—To Saighton. Things look very warlike with France, and war would certainly happen if the position in Europe were at all less unfavourable to the French, but as it is their Government will certainly not risk a fight if they can help it. The danger lies in the weakness of their Government, in the long discredit into which France has fallen, and in the ascendancy of the army. There may be a revolution any day and representatives of the Bourbons and of the Bonapartes are announced as being on the frontier.

“Arrived at Saighton. I have had it out with George about Fashoda. He states the English case with brutal frankness. ‘The day of talking,’ he says, ‘about legality in Africa is over, all the international law there is there consists of interests and understandings. It is generally agreed by all the Powers that the end of African operations is to “civilize” it in the interests of Europe, and that to gain that end all means are good. The only difference between England and France is which of them is to do it in which particular districts. England intends to do it on the Nile, and it makes no difference what the precise legal position is. We may put forward the Khedive’s rights if it is convenient or we may put forward a right of conquest, or a right of simply declaring our intentions. One is as good as another to get our end, which is the railway from Cairo to the Cape. We don’t care whether the Nile is called English or Egyptian or what it is called, but we mean to have it and we don’t mean the French to have it. The Khedive may be kept on for some years as a sort of Indian Maharajah, but it will end in a partition of the Ottoman Empire between England, Germany, and Russia, France will be allowed North-western Africa. It is not worth while drawing distinctions of right and wrong in the matter, it is a matter entirely of interest.’

“This of course is the true thought of our Government, and has been for at least ten years, but for the first time to-day it is beginning to be avowed. George represents all that is most extreme, most outrageous, in modern English politics, and it marks the decline of the higher traditions to find one like him proclaiming and defending it. I shall not write again to the ‘Times,’ I should only mar the effect of my last letter, which has certainly been great, and do no good. The dispute between France and England is a dispute between rival card sharpers, and the very best thing that can happen is that they should beat in each other’s heads.

“_18th Oct._—Worked all the morning at ‘Satan in Heaven’ [‘Satan Absolved’]. George has gone up to London.

“_19th Oct._—Made my pilgrimage of thanksgiving to Holywell in drizzle and fog, taking my nurse, Miss Lawrence, with me, and my crutches, which I deposited at the Shrine, bound up with a nightgown and a label thus inscribed:

“‘Set here in thankful token of a cure from long sickness after bathing in St. Winifred’s Well. By her servant W. S. B. October 19, 1898.’

“The scene inside the shrine was the most interesting I ever saw in Europe. Three men were being passed through the water stark naked, but for a slight bathing drawer round the loins, and each time after passing they knelt on the pavement, dripping wet and prayed aloud. A priest was reciting ‘Hail Marys,’ and at the end of each ‘Hail Mary,’ ‘Holy Winifred, still in an unbelieving age, miraculous.’ There were lighted candles and flowers, and the fervour of these naked men, one a mere bag of skin and bones, was tremendous. In the dim light of a foggy day nothing at all congruous to the nineteenth century was visible. It was a thing wholly of the middle ages, the dark ages, the darkest of the dark ages, magnificent, touching—it brought tears to my eyes. I hung up my crutches in a corner with other relics, and placed Sibell’s flowers which she had sent as a thank offering on the altar, and knelt for some ten minutes reciting the Penitential Psalms.

“Outside the shrine I found Father Beauclerk, a young, good-looking Jesuit, but deaf and afflicted with some ailment, perhaps paralytic. He told me that the Town Council of Holywell was about to try its power of closing the Well, and so of preventing the bathing, which has gone on here precisely as it is to-day since the rebuilding of the Shrine in the reign of Henry VII, and doubtless for many hundred years before it. The true legal ownership of the water seems in doubt. The Duke of Westminster is Lord of the Manor, and granted some thirty years ago a long lease to the Town Council, but by some accident never signed it. The Town Council in its turn leased it to the Jesuits, who put up a railing and established a charge of twopence a head for maintenance of the place. This charge the Town Council holds to have barred the free access of the public to the water. Otherwise the public right would seem absolutely clear. Certainly no bather has been refused admission since before the Norman Conquest. Father Beauclerk took me to see one Lambert, an innkeeper, who gave me further particulars, and who agreed if guaranteed in costs to contest the matter as a Holywell ratepayer and habitual bather. He tells me religious feud is at the bottom of the mischief. Father Beauclerk has been imprudent in making use of the Well for purposes of conversion, and in running it as a religious show. This has enraged the Nonconformists, who have determined to put down the pilgrimage as a Popish nuisance. In order more completely to desecrate the Shrine they propose to lease it to a Soda Water Company at £500 a year, and close the Well on a plea of sanitation. Lambert himself is a Protestant, but having been cured of sciatica by bathing there, is a partisan of the Well. As an innkeeper, too, his interests are affected, for the town depends largely on pilgrims for its prosperity. It is clear that steps must at once be taken to save the Shrine, and I gave Father Beauclerk a cheque for £20 towards legal expenses. He seems, however, to be sadly unpractical, and we must put the conduct of the case into other hands.

“_20th Oct._—Back to London, where I saw Treherne, the Anti-Scrape lawyer, about St. Winifred’s, and also Cockerell. In the evening a telegram came from George to say that the Duke of Westminster would take action in the matter, so that relieves us of a great difficulty.”