Chapter VII: Asquith at Downing Street (4)

“_8th July._—Gallifet is dead. I remember him well in Paris in the sixties when he used to play tennis at the court in the Tuileries Gardens, a good looking _sabreur_, with an irresponsible tongue. His wife was one of the pretty women of the second Empire, but he had no respect for her, and I have heard him crack his garrison jokes about her without reticence. She had her lovers, and he his mistresses, but made no concealment of his contempt for her. All the same he was a gallant fellow and has died in deservedly high repute with his fellow- countrymen, for what he was, a true French aristocrat of the old- fashioned fighting and love-making eighteenth century days.

“I went to a party at Button’s house at Fulham where his sister Eva was entertaining, a garden party with tea out of doors. Button has made a very beautiful place of it with his marble columns and gateways and well-heads, like a villa at Pompeii. What especially helps the effect is that there are broad walks crossing each other covered with paving stones, the squares enclosed by them being of grass. If I were a millionaire I would certainly buy the whole _en bloc_. Most of the Wyndham clan were there.

“_9th July._—To an evening party at Stafford House, a really charming entertainment of, perhaps, 200 people, which in those immense rooms looked like a family party, where I met a number of people I had not seen for years, with a few foreign guests, among them Pierre Lôti. The last is a diminutive dapper little Frenchman, very correct in his get up, with scarves and decorations, and a rather aggressive pose. Remembering his joint letter of two years ago written to me, with Mme. Adam, I got the Duchess to introduce me to him, but found him less amiable than I had reason to expect. We spoke of Mme. Adam and Mustapha Kamel, but his tone about them was not enthusiastic, and gave me the impression that there must have come a coolness between him and Mustapha since the day when they were photographed together. I mentioned having read Mustapha’s letters to Mme. Adam recently published, which are really very pretty, and in which the photograph is reproduced, but my remark brought no response at all. Perhaps their publication had displeased him. Then we were separated by other claimants on his attention. He did not impress me favourably.” There was much else of an amusing nature connected with this party but which I cannot transcribe here.

“_10th July._—Good old Lord Ripon died last night at half-past eight in the evening. One of the few honest men in public life, and the only Whig who ever showed real sympathy with Eastern liberty.

“I am reminded by having met Pamela Plowden last night of the beautiful lines Harry Cust once wrote to her, and which I think have never been published except in an ephemeral ‘Book of Beauty.’ I transcribe them here.

Beautiful face!

Is your heart broken that you look so sad?

Is there no heart on earth that once made glad

Your heart, to hearten yet your flower of grace?

Is God untender towards you? Or can Man,

Loving such dear eyes,

Or, save despairing

For too much caring,

Grudge his uncrownedness in the race he ran,

And squandered life and lived and lost the prize?

They pay the worthiest cost

Whose lives for you were lost.

“_13th July._—Spent the day at Caxtons with Professor Osborne, head of the Natural History Museum at New York, and his daughter. He is a highly intelligent man, a pupil of Huxley’s and is writing a book on horse history. He has read my controversy with Professor Ridgeway on the origin of the Arab horse in Arabia and takes my side in it, holding the Arab to have been the descendant of a distinct wild breed in the Peninsula. He wants the United States Government to start an Arabian breeding stud in some of the dry districts of the Western States.

“_16th July._—Late on Tuesday night I got a telegram from Meynell saying that Father Tyrrell was dying at Storrington, and this morning the ‘Times’ announces his death. His loss is a great one, both personally to me and to the world at large, though perhaps for himself it is a happiness. Miss Petre has very sensibly written to the ‘Times’ announcing the fact of his having died at her house, and giving the details of the last rites administered. It seems to have been a paralytic stroke, for he had lost the power of speech, and I fear his ecclesiastical enemies will hold this to be a judgment of Heaven upon him, but it will save him at least from the reproach of having ‘recanted his errors’ in the face of death. I have telegraphed to Miss Petre and shall certainly, if permitted, attend his funeral as an act of sympathy with a persecuted man who was also, I am glad to think, my friend.

“_Later._ I drove over to Mulberry House. Miss Petre had gone out to the monastery, but her sister, Mrs. Powell, took me into the garden house and showed me the poor body. It was laid out in the tiny cell which had been his sleeping place, hardly more than a cupboard, ten feet, perhaps, by five; there was scarcely room to squeeze in between the very narrow bed and the wall. There lay the dead heresiarch, as sad a little shard of humanity as ever my eyes saw. I could not have recognized it as the man I had known so brilliant in his talk, so full of combative life, or indeed, hardly as a man at all. The face was shrunk and the features seemed to have fallen in though he had been only thirty-six hours dead, for he died at nine yesterday morning, and the body with its poor small fingers was more like an accidental handful of shapeless clay than anything that had been alive. Pious hands had clothed him in surplice and stole, as befitted the priest he was, and there were two tapers lighted at his head. I knelt a minute or two beside him and recited a ‘De Profundis’ and kissed the hem of his garment, or rather the stole, and rose and went out, moved, as one could not help being moved, to tears of pity. It was so utter an ending. I had some talk with Mrs. Powell, a vigorous, unemotional woman of fifty, who gave me the details of his death and of how the Archbishop was raising objections to his being buried as a Catholic with full funeral rights. Her sister was out on this very business at the monastery, but would be back immediately and she urged me to await her. I occupied the half-hour which elapsed in paying a visit to Mrs. Lucas, Meynell’s married daughter, who has taken rooms in a farm house, Chantry’s, just outside the village. When I came back I found Miss Petre had returned and she received me in her room upstairs. I had been prepared to find her altered by this sudden misfortune, but she met me with her usual cheerful smile and without a trace of sadness on her face. There was no paleness on her cheeks or trace of tears, and she talked at once in her open, straightforward way about all that had happened and was happening. She is a wonderfully wise, courageous woman, for it is certain that Father Tyrrell’s death must be a terrible grief to her, and loss in every way. She talked of him simply as a child might talk, but with the wisdom of a woman, the courage of a man. What she told me is this: Three months ago there had been some question of Father Tyrrell’s health and he had seen a doctor, some kidney trouble, but the doctor thought little of it. It was while he was staying at Clapham, nor did he think much of it himself. He came back to Storrington for his summer holiday at the end of last month. She thought him overworked, for he was writing a final apologetic, added to his great daily correspondence. It was not till a week after, that one day he complained of his head, while at dinner, and rose to leave the table and, as I understand, fell. Still, for a day, she did not recognize it as serious. ‘I am naturally of a sanguine disposition,’ she said, ‘and thought he would recover. He complained of violent pains in the head, and could not speak plainly, but I did not recognize it for what it was. Then he got worse. I was with him for forty-eight hours without leaving him before anyone came to help nurse him. He suffered terrible pain continuously till he died.’ Three doctors have since declared him to have had Bright’s disease and the stroke to have been a consequence, the breaking of a blood vessel on the brain. She repeated to me what there was in her ‘Times’ letter about his having received the last sacraments. ‘I sent it,’ she said, ‘because I knew there would be all sorts of stories told, and I thought it best to let the truth be known at once.’ She was pleased when I told her how wisely, in my opinion, she had done. ‘It was, perhaps, fortunate,’ she said, ‘that he could not speak, as it spared him explanations, and enabled his friend Abbé Brémond, to administer the sacraments and give him absolution, also it will at least prevent any false account of his having at the last moment made recantation of his opinions.’

“She went on to speak of their difficulties since with Archbishop Bourne, and she spoke strongly of the little moral courage existing in the world, and how all were afraid of undertaking independent responsibility. The Prior of Storrington was anxious to be kind, but he was without courage, and it seemed as though he would not dare give a Catholic burial, although he had administered extreme unction. I suggested that the Crawley monks might be more bold, and it is settled that we are to apply to them if others fail.

“_17th July._—The ‘Times’ has the following: ‘At Mulberry House, Storrington, the Rev. George Tyrrell, aged 48, fortified by the rights of the Church. R.I.P.’

“Meynell arrived for the week-end. He has been to the Archbishop’s house in Westminster to discuss the case of Tyrrell’s burial. The Archbishop himself is away, having gone abroad to Rheims to take part in the ceremonials connected with Joan of Arc’s canonization, but he saw Butt the coadjutor. He tells me Miss Petre’s letter to the ‘Times’ has put them in a terrible fix. Bourne is himself much in sympathy with the Modernists, and especially with Father Tyrrell. He had once said, ‘I had rather my hand withered than lift it against Tyrrell’; nor is Butt otherwise than friendly. But the position is this: Tyrrell, though not technically excommunicated, was cut off from the sacraments until he would recant three propositions, which he had not recanted. If nothing at all had been said, the fact of his having on his death-bed received absolution and extreme unction might have allowed them to presume a recantation, but Miss Petre’s letter makes this difficult or impossible, and the Archbishop if appealed to must forbid Catholic burial. To me, however, it seems that in the first place Miss Petre’s letter to the ‘Times’ is not authoritative, however true what it says may be; secondly, burial not being a sacrament while penance and extreme unction are sacraments, it would be straining at a gnat to refuse the first, the rest having been swallowed. Meynell thinks that if the worst comes to the worst it would be best to bury him at Newbuildings where Abbé Brémond could perform the service, trusting to a change in ecclesiastical opinion for his subsequent translation to consecrated ground. Meynell cited it as curious that he should find himself connected with this case as he had been with that of Mivart. In Mivart’s case Meynell had appealed to Cardinal Vaughan, who left the decision to three of his canons, two of whom decided against Mivart’s being given Catholic burial, so Vaughan forbade it; but on Vaughan’s own death-bed he was troubled at the thought of this decision. ‘I was wrong,’ he said, ‘in the Mivart case.’ And, in fact, Mivart’s body has since been removed (it was done privately at night) and reburied according to Catholic ritual in consecrated ground. It is also curious that Bourne should be just now away at Rheims, officiating at Joan of Arc’s canonization; Joan of Arc, who was refused by the Bishops of her day burial at all, her ashes being scattered to the winds lest any relic of her should be preserved, and over the place of whose martyrdom were ecclesiastically inscribed the words ‘Heretic and Sorceress,’ yet she is to-day being worshipped on all Catholic altars. The same might happen, who knows, to Father Tyrrell. The Archbishop’s position is made more difficult because his leanings towards Modernism have delayed the sending a hat to him from Rome.

“The ‘Times’ announces the abdication of the Shah Mohammed Ali and the triumph of the Constitutional régime in Persia, which is acknowledged by the Russian and English Governments. This is a victory stolen out of the fire, and Browne may justly claim as his the whole success. But for him Persia would most certainly have been annexed by Russia, or rather put under Russian tutelage after the precedent of Egypt.

“_18th July._—After luncheon I drove Meynell to Storrington, where we found Mrs. Powell. The present situation is that they have got a telegram from Brentwood, the Petre estate in Essex, to say that the priest there will bury Father Tyrrell; so they consider the matter settled, and Miss Petre has gone to Brentwood to make sure. The funeral will be on Wednesday.

“Mrs. Powell gave us a more detailed account of Father Tyrrell’s illness. He had had trouble with the kidneys for some time, but did not pay much attention to it, and his doctor did not consider it very important, though now, since his seizure, all agreed it to have been Bright’s disease. He spent the early Spring at Clapham, but when her sister returned from abroad he also returned to Storrington, but had left again for London till the end of June, when he once more came to Mulberry House for the summer. He had been greatly overworked and felt his quarrel with Rome more deeply than appeared on the surface. He was subject to violent headaches, when he would retire to his own room for twenty-four hours at a time, but in the intervals was cheerful and seemed full of life. His general health had improved latterly.

“_20th July._—Tyrrell’s case seems to have been referred to Rome, and the burial service absolutely forbidden. It is announced to be at Storrington to-morrow, I presume in the parish graveyard, so I go back to Newbuildings to-night. Tyrrell’s little book of poems is in print at Elkin Mathews’, though not yet published. Meynell took me there and we saw it: ‘Versions and Perversions,’ with ‘To W. S. B.’ on the title- page. They gave us a copy of it not yet bound.

“I lunched with Harry Cust and his wife and George Leveson Gower, and Harry’s young nephew (Storrs), who has some place in Egypt, a very intelligent youth.

“John Dillon spent an hour with me, and we discussed India and the ethics of assassination. He said he had always been opposed to it, except where there were secret societies, which could not be maintained without it against members who turned traitor. I told him I would send him my ‘Canon of Aughrim,’ which he said he had never read. He will try and bring forward the case of the Egyptian press persecutions on Thursday, when they have the Foreign Office vote. There may be some chance of getting it discussed now that the Persian question seems in way of settlement. He says, however, that there are not three members in the House that interest themselves about Egypt—and this is true.

“I went down by the last train to Newbuildings, nor do I intend to return to London this summer.

“_21st July._—The day of Father Tyrrell’s funeral. I drove over to Storrington, and arrived at Mulberry House half an hour before the contingent of mourners from London, and had some talk while waiting with Freddy von Hügel, now an old man much grizzled, and the most distinguished of the lay Modernists in England, and with his daughter, a devout disciple of Tyrrell’s. She was greatly pleased with his lines, ‘Two Chambers hath the Heart,’ when I recited them to her. The London friends having arrived, we formed procession some forty or fifty persons, to the grave, which was in Storrington parish churchyard, a pleasant place under the Down where Tyrrell had been in the habit of walking and reciting his breviary not twenty yards away from the Catholic Chapel, just outside the wall, symbolic, so I thought, of the position into which Tyrrell himself had drifted. Abbé Brémond read the funeral prayers in English, and then read an address he had very carefully composed for publication, a moderate and worthy presentment of his poor friend’s religious attitude towards either Church, the English or the Roman. Miss Petre was to me the chief interest at the grave. She was evidently much moved, and her face showed signs of weeping, but she stood there valiantly with her sisters and two little nieces following the prayers out of a book with them and giving the responses aloud. I shook hands with her when all was over, and she asked me into the house, but I did not care to face the crowd there, and drove straight home.

“_23rd July._—The Foreign Office vote was taken yesterday, the whole time allotted to it being occupied discussing the Czar’s visit, so that Dillon could say nothing about Egypt. It is impossible to get any attention in the House of Commons either about foreign affairs or about India.

“_24th July._—Dingra, the slayer of Sir Curzon Wyllie, has been condemned to death, having made no defence, beyond a dignified justification of his act as one of political warfare. When the judge, the Lord Chief Justice, had passed sentence on him that he should be hanged by the neck until he was dead, ‘Thank you, my lord,’ Dingra said. ‘I am proud to have the honour to lay down my humble life for my country.’ Also, before the sentence, he had said: ‘You can pass sentence of death on me if you like, it is perfectly illegal. You are all- powerful and can do what you like, but remember, we shall have our time.’ No Christian martyr ever faced his judges more fearlessly or with greater dignity. I discussed his case with Kháparde, who is here for the week-end, his first country visit in England. He is as full of admiration as I am of Dingra’s courage. We agreed that if India could produce five hundred men as absolutely without fear she would achieve her freedom. It was recorded in the medical evidence at the trial that when arrested, Dingra’s pulse beat no quicker than was normal, nor from first to last has he shown any sign of weakening.

“_25th July (Sunday)._—Kháparde (Mrs. Russell, Miss Cockerell, and Miss Nussey being here) gave us a most interesting account of his religious views. He is a Theosophist, having adopted their tenets as a young man, and he explained, better than I have ever heard it treated, their teaching of the relation between mind and matter. He is an admirable expounder, expressing himself slowly in English, but with extreme clearness and logical exactness, seizing at once the meaning of each question put to him, and evading nothing in reply. By birth he is a Mahratta Brahmin who has broken his caste. His father was a Yogi, and he gave us an excellent account of him and the high-minded simple life he led; how he passed his days sitting for the most part in the shade of trees in contemplation during his later life, though earlier he had been in Government service as Deputy Collector, or something of the sort. His grandfather had been a banker and rich, but dying his wealth had been lost, and the father had to reconstruct it and revive the bank. Kháparde himself was brought up in good circumstances, living on lands of his father’s own, with horses to ride, and a herd of cows. He had made his education in the Government College in Bombay, and while there had joined the Theosophists. He is now fifty-six. He reverences Mme. Blavatsky and highly esteems Mrs. Besant, though the latter, he says, has gone wrong lately on the political question. Under these ladies’ influence he learned to eat meat and drink wine, but later returned to his vegetarian food. His philosophy is extremely interesting, but it always surprises me that the doctrine of the eternity of the soul renewing itself by passing from body to body should be so absolutely believed as it is by men so enlightened in science. In reply to his exposition I set before him my own philosophy of the nothingness of man, a mere scum on the surface of our little earth. He acknowledges the truth of this, but supposes that in other worlds of the vast universe a higher kind of animal body exists into which our souls may transmigrate before they come to perfection. ‘Only a few souls, such as Jesus Christ or Buddha,’ he said, ‘can have attained to perfection on this Earth.’ Arguing on these lines he had a great success with our house party, his discourse having become a regular lecture, including Miss Lawrence and Miss Butcher and my grandchildren, who listened with open eyes fixed on his dark face and crimson turban. In the course of it his exposition between soul and body were so closely the same as those I had put into verse fifty years ago that I recited a stanza of it to him:

I am but by your union.

With either soul or body lost

All perisheth. Then work ye on

Together, friends not corpse and ghost.

To live and be is my sole boast.

Learn this, alone ye nothing can.

Yet both together ye make Man.

“This he declared to be an inspired verse. Later he displayed great intelligence when I showed him my Arab horses, chestnut with four white feet and a blaze, being, he said, the favourite Indian colour, especially that dark chestnut (Feluka’s colour) which he recognized just as Mohammed Abdu had done as _kumeyt_.

“_26th July._—Belloc tells me that the government is seeking an excuse to treat Dingra as a criminal lunatic instead of hanging him. That traitor Stead had a letter in yesterday’s ‘Observer’ urging this on the ground that it would punish him more. I have written to Dillon showing how dangerous a precedent it would be, as admitting the right of an English Government to inflict lifelong torture on its political enemies when it finds one brave enough to face death and defy them. Kháparde says that certainly Dingra would prefer death, because he would then at once re-enter life in a higher sphere of being, instead of having to wait twenty or thirty years in prison for it, with the risk of becoming deteriorated by the too long persecution.

“_29th July._—The papers are full of flying feats, a Frenchman, Blériot, having flown across the Channel. How interested Robert Lytton would have been in this! He always maintained forty years ago that the true solution of the flying problem lay in a machine which should be heavier, not lighter than air.

“_30th July._—There has been something of a revolution in Spain, caused by an unsuccessful piece of filibustering by the Spanish Government in Morocco. The people at Barcelona and Madrid refused to go on with the War there. It is an excellent symptom of anti-jingo feeling, and will do good everywhere, though it will also work to the profit of Socialism.

“_1st Aug. (Sunday)._—Belloc and Basil Blackwood came to luncheon; Belloc in one of his most talkative moods. He tells me Father John Pollen was with Tyrrell the day before he died. Belloc was at Mulberry House, too, though not inside Tyrrell’s room. There has been a great dispute in the papers as to the true facts, but Pollen’s visit is mentioned by none of the writers, unless it be as ‘the other priest’ who gave him absolution.

“_15th Aug. (Sunday)._—We have Professor Cockerell and his wife here for the week-end with Meynell and again Kháparde. Kháparde, who was born a native of the Berar province of Hyderabad, has told me the story of how the province was finally made over to the Calcutta Government on a perpetual lease in 1903.[7] Kháparde’s account is that when Curzon was at Hyderabad in that year he was invited to dine with the Nizam, he being on one side of the Nizam and Lady Curzon on the other, they got him to give a verbal promise that a lease should be granted, the Nizam being partly drunk at the time. In the morning he would have backed out of his promise, but Curzon threatened to depose him and forced him to sign the document desired. Thus Lord Ripon’s promise that the Berar province should not be taken was evaded by the officials. The Nizam is said to have been so angry at what had been done that he refused to take food for four days. Now there is a new intrigue, which has for its object to get hold of the two other Provinces, Arungabad and Parabhani, they being, after the Berars, the richest of the Nizam’s territory. I asked Kháparde his opinion of the Viceroys who succeeded Lord Ripon. Of Dufferin he said he was a diplomatist, who gave fair words but did nothing. On arrival he announced that he intended to carry out Lord Ripon’s policy, but he made no step in advance of the Municipal Councils, Lord Ripon’s first instalment of self-government. Lords Lansdowne and Elgin also did nothing, letting the officials have their own way. He holds Curzon to have had the ambition to make himself Viceroy for life of India, and to revive the state and splendour of the Mogul Emperors. The great Durbar of 1903 cost £5,000,000 sterling, though only £50,000 figured for it in the budget, the deficit being made up by charges credited to the Public Works Department. This was made easy by the arrangement according to which the provincial budgets are subject to approval and alteration at Calcutta, so that extra expenses can be charged on these if required by the Imperial Government. In Curzon’s time all the Councils were officialized, and the management centralized, so as to destroy their independence. He told how the famine accounts had been manipulated in 1900 in Berar and the Hyderabad state. During the famine no accounts were kept by those entrusted with the distribution of relief, the money wanted being drawn from a fund at Hyderabad, which consisted of the surpluses of six or seven years, paid from the Berars and kept there in hand, but when the famine was over those who had administered the relief were called together and were told to write out accounts, so much for one thing, so much for another, so as to make up the sum taken from the Fund; thus there was no real check at all upon the expenditure.

“I asked him about loyalty to the Crown. At this he smiled. There was at one time, he said, a certain feeling towards Queen Victoria, on account of her proclamation of 1858, but all that was long past. The Nizam was bitter about the Berars, and had no love at all for the Imperial Government or for the present King. The Duke of Connaught had good manners with the Indian princes; in this a great contrast with others, but his appointment as viceroy would not alter the situation now. As to the Mohammedans there would be no difficulty arising from them in a restoration of self-government, except in the Punjaub, where the feeling between the two communities, Hindoo and Moslem, was still very bitter.

“This afternoon we had quite a garden party, over twenty guests sitting down to tea in the Jubilee Garden. Among them Miss Frances Jennings, who came with one of the Meynell girls. Miss Jennings is a most interesting girl, pretty in the Burne-Jones way, with a rose-leaf complexion, strange blue eyes and flaxen hair. Meynell tells me she is of Welsh origin, but she herself said her father was from Cumberland, her mother from Devonshire. She came up quite young to the Slade School in London, where everybody, girls and boys, fell in love with her, and she having a romantic fancy for Olivia Meynell, became a Catholic, inflicted on herself all kinds of austerities, and wanted to be a nun. In the meantime her drawing at the Slade School became famous, and she went over to Paris to study art there. She was alone, and failed to find a lodging in an inn in the Quartier Latin, and was picked up by a charitable Englishman there, who has ever since wanted to marry her. Then she returned to England, and last Spring was found by her friends sitting outside St. Etheldreda’s church in the rain with severe influenza, and she has since been paralysed. I had some talk with her. She has all the look of a Saint, with strange unearthly eyes which seemed as if looking at spirits in the air, and a wonderful ecstatic smile and still more wonderfully sweet voice; her features rather irregular with a wide unshaped mouth, I can imagine her attracting a young man’s devotion. Kháparde has talked brilliantly all day.

“_17th August._—My birthday of 69. They have done me the honour of choosing the day for Dingra’s execution, thus making of it an anniversary which will be regarded as one of martyrdom in India for generations.

“Another long talk with Kháparde. He is very angry with the Indian Government, which has just closed five Schools which he had founded in Berar, as seditious. He talked more plainly than he has yet done about the future of India. I asked him whether they could set up a form of Government there which would replace the English, and if so what would be its character? He answered that it could easily be done. First, they would redistribute the provinces, so as to make them coincide with ethnical conditions, each to be governed by a Provincial Council, which in its turn would send delegates to a Central Council. The Provincial Councils would have the management of all provincial affairs, while the Central Council would control the army, the posts and telegraphs, foreign affairs, and other matters called Imperial. Thus, in a way, the old Hindoo Empire and the Empire of Akbar would be refounded. Who should be the head of it would probably be determined by events; it might be a successful soldier, or it might be a President, as in the United States. All would be easy to arrange. He does not give English rule in India more than five to ten, at most twenty, years of survival. A revolution could be accomplished to-morrow if the funds necessary were forthcoming. Five million sterling would be sufficient. As to the army, it was a mere matter of money which side it would take. It was mercenary, and would go where its pay was most secure. It was not loyal for any other reason. As for the native Princes whose loyalty was constantly proclaimed, they hated English rule in their hearts; their loyalty was forced on them by the residents, who ordered all things in their name, by promises held out alternately with threats. One great hold the Residents had over them was this: in former times each independent prince had his treasure house where he stored up his wealth. Now the Residents insisted on their investing it in Government securities, so as to bind their money interests to the existing state of things. I showed him my notes of what Mademoiselle Gaignaud had told me in 1884 about Cordery’s threats to the Nizam. He assured me it was true. Since I was at Hyderabad, there had been a plot in Lord Dufferin’s time, according to which it had been intended to depose the Nizam, on the plea of unsound mind, and to replace him with a Regency, so as once more to get control of the State Funds; but this had been prevented by the Nizam’s appeal to his old minister, the Peshkar, who had him medically examined and pronounced him to be entirely sane before Cordery could get a contrary medical opinion. The plan of Governing by a Regency was a favourite one with our officials, as it threw all power without restraint into the hands of the Resident. As to Scindia, it was the same thing; none of the native princes were really loyal, in spite of their public professions and their subscriptions.

“I asked him whether it would not be better to bring about the coming change peaceably. He said, ‘Of course. But it would be impossible; there are too many money interests involved. India, in spite of the great poverty of the people, still had much undeveloped wealth in mines and such like. The Indian Government would always be able to pay a mercenary army for its support, and as long as it could pay its way it would listen to no reason. It would never abdicate its authority while it could buy men to fight. The Government policy was to prevent the growth of wealth in native hands. Nevertheless the present state of things could not be made to last by force for more than twenty years.

“Dr. Riza Tewfik, Turkish delegate and member of Parliament for Adrianople, lunched with us in Chapel Street. He is by birth an Albanian Moslem, his mother a Circassian, nor has he till this year been out of Turkey, yet he talks French like a Parisian, and has a great knowledge of French and English literature, and has acquired a very great breadth of ideas. Of Turkey’s constitutional prospects he does not speak hopefully; the Empire is so diverse in its languages and nationalities. He believes in ultimate autonomy for the provinces, though at present self-preservation makes administrative union a necessity. He approves my recommendation of allowing the interior of Arabia to govern itself in its own way, holding only the seaports and the pilgrim railway. I asked him about Egypt. ‘Egypt,’ he said, ‘is already independent of the Empire, except in name. We sympathize with their desire for a constitution, but they must look for it to England. We cannot interfere or raise any question likely to make trouble between us and England. England will probably allow the Egyptians some kind of Constitution, as much as they are worthy of. They are a corrupt people without courage. Nevertheless there is no danger of the Ottoman Government selling Egypt to England as the price of financial help. It has been talked about at Constantinople, but will not be entertained.’

“Speaking of the revolution at Constantinople, Dr. Riza Tewfik said that the reactionaries had a certain support from our Embassy through the influence of Fitzmaurice, the Chief Dragoman, our Ambassador, Lowther, being quite ignorant of Turkish affairs. On the whole I find him quite sympathetic, and he urged me to write to him. He returns to Constantinople this week.”

I went down in the evening to Clouds, where I spent ten pleasant days.

“_18th Aug._—Dingra’s last dying pronouncement is published in the _Daily News_, all other papers being silent about it.[8] It is a noble declaration of his faith in the destinies of his motherland and in his own. ‘My wish,’ he says, ‘is that I should be born again of the same mother, and that I should die the same death for her again.’ No greater fortitude was ever shown by a martyr for any faith. With such men to love her, the Mother India must succeed; but the British public is so besotted with its own self-satisfaction that it refuses to acknowledge in this martyr’s death endured so calmly anything but a murderer’s wish for notoriety. The day of reckoning, however, cannot be long delayed.

“_19th Aug._—At Clouds. Lyne Stivens, the doctor, was here to-day, a vulgar, amusing dog, who told a number of good stories. One of them was how the King received Cromer on his return from Egypt when he went to His Majesty to receive the Order of Merit. ‘I am happy,’ the King said, ‘to bestow this final honour upon you, and all the more so because I hear so good an account of your work in Egypt from my friend Sir Ernest Cassel.’ This raised Cromer’s bile.

“He told us, too, of how the Duke of Connaught’s chauffeur, having been fined by the magistrates of Salisbury for exceeding the legal speed limit in his motor, His Royal Highness had declared his determination never to enter Salisbury again, with more stories of a like high life kind. He had brought with him his wife, a Buenos Aires heiress, whose wealth puts him above the necessities of his profession, much to his fellow-doctors’ disgust, who treat him as a quack; but he is a clever fellow, who claps his patients on the back and tells them to ‘buck up,’ which they do. He talked about the Dingra assassination, which seems to have at last convinced his Royal friends that there is something wrong about the state of India. People talk about political assassination as defeating its own end, but that is nonsense; it is just the shock needed to convince selfish rulers that selfishness has its limits of imprudence. It is like that other fiction that England never yields to threats. My experience is that when England has her face well slapped she apologizes, not before.

“_22nd Aug._—Hugh Wyndham, the younger, arrived last night. He is settled now with his wife near Johannesburg, on a farm eight hours’ railway journey from the Natal frontier, where he breeds thoroughbreds for racing. He is a rich man, as his father left each of the younger sons £10,000 a year, and he intends going into the new Cape Town Parliament. He gave me a more intelligent view of the political position than I have yet had. He approves of the Transvaal settlement made after the war, and thinks that in time Boer and Briton will settle down amicably together, though the balance of power will be with the Boer, whose vote on all questions will be given solidly, and who moreover is an increasing population more than is the British. On the negro question he does not think there is any danger of a return to legal slavery. Also it will be impossible to prevent the education of the blacks, or their eventually obtaining the franchise. They are rapidly increasing in numbers and in knowledge of their power. He would like State education for them, so as to direct their intelligence in a right direction. He is opposed to dividing the land into white and black districts, as it would be impossible to enforce the dividing lines. The whole question of the future is whether the white man can be persuaded to do manual labor. If not, South Africa must eventually fall to the blacks, but he thinks the pride of colour will be sacrificed by the whites when they find they cannot live without white labour. He also thinks that the independence of the Basutos and Bechuanas will be respected. His ideas are far more humane than I at all expected.

“_29th Aug. (Sunday)._—I am spending a week-end at St. Giles’ with the Shaftesburys, a large and pleasant party with a number of interesting people, George Wyndham amongst them, and we sat up talking late, Shaftesbury, George and I, when the rest were gone, and with us De Bary, Shaftesbury’s chaplain, once Father Angelo at Crawley, now doing priestly duty in the Anglican Church. I asked him what his religious position exactly was, and he told me that, without changing any of his opinions, he had signed the Thirty-nine Articles as expounded to him by Dr. Gore, the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham, and now did duty in the parish church here. He seems quite happy, and has a very pleasant time of it at St. Giles’ and at Belfast with the Shaftesburys. He is a quiet, serious man, and spends his time writing books on theology and history, being on the best of terms with his patrons, making them a very superior chaplain indeed. George, of course, did most of our talking, and gave us one of his lectures on Irish politics and the new Land Bill, using arguments which are precisely the strongest ones for Home Rule. We also discussed India, and he agreed with my major premise that India was being ruined by us economically. He does not seem wrapped up in its retention, caring more for the English-speaking colonies. Shaftesbury, without special brilliancy, is sensible and open-minded, and took full share in all this.

“_30th Aug._—Newbuildings. Kháparde has been telling me some tales of the great Delhi Durbar of 1903, at which he was present. It began with a half comic, half ominous incident. All the world was assembled in the great horseshoe arena waiting for Lord Curzon to open the proceedings in state, when a fox terrier belonging to a bandsman in one of the Highland regiments was suddenly seen to mount the steps of the dais and jump into the throne on which the viceroy was to sit and began barking, to the amusement of the assembled Princes, dignitaries of the Empire, and somewhat too to their disgust, till the dog was driven out. It seemed to some of the Princes to symbolize the indignity to which they were subjected, and the position of India as a country with a dog for master. When Lord Curzon arrived, he took his seat, the Duke of Connaught, representing the King, being placed at his right on another throne, and the Duke had to rise and bow to the Viceroy, which gave new offence to the native princes, while Lady Curzon had to curtsey to the Duchess, each being then seated behind their respective husbands. A third cause of offence was when the Begum of Bhopal came forward in public, contrary to all Indian usage about women, and touched the Viceroy’s foot with her forehead. Lastly, as an ill-omen, three men of the Highland regiments fell down dead with sunstroke. These happenings, which Kháparde saw with his own eyes, being not more than ten or fifteen yards from the throne, were the subject of much native talk, though the incident of the dog was kept out of the newspapers. The chief offence, however, given to the princes was that, while Curzon returned none of their visits paid to him in camp, he devoted three hours to newspaper correspondents.

“He told me also some interesting details of the Government’s dealings with the rulers of various native States, notably with Scindia, Holkar and the Nizam. Scindia, it seems, had accumulated eighty crores of rupees in specie as a reserve fund in case of actual rebellion and for the payment of an army he kept up of some strength. This immense sum the Imperial Government, taking advantage of there being a Regency (a favourite opportunity), invested in Government securities, and this bound the Gwalior State to loyalty. This was managed under Lansdowne. Under Curzon, the State of Indore, Holkar’s, was in like manner manipulated during a Regency.

“_31st Aug._—Newbuildings. Two young Egyptians came to dine and sleep, and consult me about their hopes. They have come to England on behalf of the National Congress to be held at Geneva on the 13th, the anniversary of Tel-el-Kebir. Both young men are courageous in their opinions, and the elder especially of a keen intelligence, reminding me not a little of Mustapha Kamel, but speaking English instead of French. The younger of a purer Egyptian type, the son of a rich man in the Delta, who has been for three years an undergraduate at Oxford. The first was a disciple of Abdu’s, and has taken a degree at the University of Lyons, and has been working for some time past among the Delta villages, preaching political sermons in the mosques. He gives a very hopeful account of his progress among them. Both are thoroughgoing in their plans. They came to ask my advice as to the course of action they should take under present conditions. The Khedive, they say, has gone over altogether to the English, but has very little influence, the younger students of the Azhar being now very nearly all Nationalists. What they are afraid of now is lest the Government at Constantinople should sell Egypt to England. On this point I reassured them. I advised them to keep on the best possible terms with the Copts and the European Colonies, so as to conciliate as far as possible the European Powers, and very especially not to quarrel with Constantinople, Egypt’s connection with the Ottoman Empire being its real safe-guard against England. We discussed the formation of a secret society on the lines of the Turkish Committee of Union and Progress. One of them has a plan of throwing up his career at Oxford without waiting for a degree, and of going to Constantinople or the United States or Germany to get a military training. He says the Egyptian army is rapidly becoming Nationalist, and they have received assurances that it would join them in case of disturbances. It would not fire on the people, but officers would be wanted when the time came to take the place of the present English officers. He is fired with the ambition of playing a part like Enver Bey’s. He is a big strong young fellow, rather silent, but with flashes of enthusiasm and anger. I much applauded his resolution; also I told them I considered it waste time to try and convert England to the idea of evacuation. Englishmen were not open to persuasion on that head, but might be convinced if it could be shown that their hold on Egypt was a trouble and a danger. I read them my manifesto, not yet finished, for the Congress, and they will have it read out at the opening of the proceedings. It is in French, and they will have it translated into Arabic as well as English. We sat up talking till midnight. These are the sort of young men to make a revolution. The older Egyptians are useless; they have not the courage.

“_1st September._—The young men are gone. Winston Churchill came down to-day to Carpenters to see his wife, who is staying there with her mother, and I had tea with them and discussed the Indian question with him. I found him sufficiently open-minded to admit that if it could be proved that India was poorer to-day than a hundred years ago we ought to leave it.

“_2nd Sept._—There is a report in the papers to-day that the Grand Vizier at Constantinople, Hilmi Pasha, has declared his entire approval of the Khedive and of English policy in Egypt; but it is also rumoured that Hilmi is about to resign. I have read Gorst’s new White Paper with the text of a new law permitting the deportation of persons in Egypt without trial.

“_5th Sept. (Sunday)._—Winston and Clementine came to lunch with me. Winston is a charming young man, as unconventional as his father was, and as light in hand. We lunched in the garden, and sat there after it till four o’clock, discussing nearly all the great questions of the day, the Budget, the fight with the Lords, South Africa, Egypt, India, all the tricks of the political game. He believes the Budget to be very popular, and that the Government will win on it if it comes to a General Election; but it will not come to that. The Lords will not fight. Some day there will be a great Constitutional fight, which he thinks the Commons will win, though, at present, the Lords would have all the physical force in their hands: army, territorials and Boy Scouts. The Lords could be coerced if they refused, after the General Election, a second time to vote the Budget, and the King, if he refused to swamp them with new peers.

“Talking about public schools he said they were a bad training for a clever boy. ‘I never learned anything at school,’ he said, ‘and to be high up at Eton is enough to ruin any boy, and give him a narrow view of life.’ He likes the universities and military training for a few years, though the army is a poor profession. ‘I got all the fun of it,’ he said, ‘for I was on active service nearly all the time in the Soudan, and afterwards in South Africa, as a newspaper correspondent.’ He went on to Kitchener and the Mahdi’s head. Kitchener, he said, had behaved like a blackguard in that business. He pretended to have sent the head back to Soudan in a kerosene tin, but the tin may have contained anything, perhaps ham sandwiches. He kept the head, and has it still. ‘I made a row about that,’ he said, ‘though they told me it was bad taste for a young Lieutenant to say anything. I always hated Kitchener, though I did not know him personally. They are ashamed of the matter now, but I took pains to remind them of it two years ago when the case for Mambata’s mutilation in Natal was brought forward. I had to defend the Government. “At any rate,” I said, “We have an excellent precedent for what was done to the Zulu Chief in what Lord Kitchener did to the Mahdi when he blew up the body and kept the head.” There was a question raised about a medal being struck for the campaign amongst the Zulus, and they sent the sketch of it to me at the Office for approval. I wrote on it: “Surely the medal ought to have Mambata’s head on it, not the King’s.” This docket must be still at the War Office.’

“From this we went on to the characters of various personages; Morley’s, which he praised, because he always learned something from talking with him, though he more or less agreed with me about him as a poor politician, and the mess he had made about that very Mahdi’s head business. Of Arthur Balfour he narrated how Belloc had spoiled a dinner- party at Harry Cust’s where Arthur and several others had been. The house had caught fire during the dinner, and after putting it out they all drank champagne, and Arthur had grown talkative and confidential, and was just launching into the secret history of the South African War when Belloc insisted upon giving his own views and kept on talking all night and Arthur never got in again. Winston corresponds with Labby, of whom he has a good opinion, and he admires Chamberlain, ‘Old Joe,’ because he is unscrupulous and bold; but he says Labby is an example of failure in that line. He had the ambition of being in the Cabinet, or else an ambassador, and he succeeded in neither. About South Africa he told how he had dined with Moore, the Natal Premier, a little while ago, and how Moore had said to him, apropos of what was going on in India: ‘Well, Churchill, I suppose you’ll have to bleed them soon; there’s nothing like it. Next time they have a demonstration ride them down, and if that isn’t enough pour in a volley. You’ll bleed a few thousands of them, but it will be better for them in the long run; there’s nothing like bleeding.’ Winston did not talk as much about India as I had hoped, but he said: ‘If they ever unite against us and put us in Coventry all round, the game would be up. If they could agree to have nothing at all to do with us the whole thing would collapse.’

“He went on to Egypt. He said: ‘We shall continue to hold it whatever happens; nobody will ever give it up—I won’t—except we are driven out of it at the end of a war. It will all depend upon whether we can hold command of the sea; the fate of the war will decide it.’ It is something to know from him that this is, in fact, the present Government’s policy. It is exactly what I have just written in my Congress Manifesto.