Chapter VII: Asquith at Downing Street (5)

“I talked to him about my prison time in Ireland, and this interested him. ‘I am dead against the present system,’ he said, ‘and if I am ever at the Home Office I will make a clean sweep of it.’ I promised to send him in a paper on the subject if ever the time should come. He thinks Home Rule will come now very soon. About the suffragettes, he expects them to take to dynamite, he told a story of a man who, talking about their chaining themselves to the railings till they got the vote, said: ‘I might as well chain myself to St. Thomas’s Hospital and say I would not move till I had had a baby.’ Coming indoors he saw the butterflies in cases on the chimney-piece, and told us about those he had found in Uganda. I like him much. He is _aux plus petits soins_ with his wife, taking all possible care of her. They are a very happy married pair. Clementine was afraid of wasps, and one settled on her sleeve, and Winston gallantly took the wasp by the wings and thrust it into the ashes of the fire. We had out the stallions for him to look at; Ibn Yashmak being the one he liked best. He is to come again and shoot pheasants here in October. Now he is off to the Prussian Manœuvres and to visit Kaiser Wilhelm.

“Talking about the decay of the House of Commons as a power in the country, he said that if he had his way he would revive the right of adjourning the House once a week to debate any urgent affair of the moment. He is all for the discussion of everything, and is inclined even to adopt my doctrine of no secret diplomacy. He thinks with me that it is monstrous the Government should be able to bind the country by secret treaties for years, while the country knows nothing whatever about them.

“_12th Sept._—On Tuesday Keir Hardie sent me an urgent message wanting to see me about Egypt at any hour next day that I would name, and I telegraphed that I would give him luncheon in Chapel Street at one; but though I went up to London on purpose he failed to keep his appointment, and it was not till two days later that he wrote to apologize. These M.P.’s have no manners. His reason for wanting to see me was that he was going to the Congress of Geneva with Kettle and two or three other members. I have been hard at work all the week past writing my manifesto for the Egyptian Congress in French, and I have posted it to Geneva.

“_16th Sept._—De Bary, ex-Father Angelo, came for a couple of nights. He tells me his father and mother were mystics who looked for a restoration of a theocracy in Europe under the Pope and a Catholic king in France. They wished all their six children to become monks and nuns, and all six did so. He himself joined the Capuchins before he was fifteen, and made his vows without knowing anything, if I understand him rightly, of the relations of the sexes. For that reason Father Tyrrell was of opinion that De Bary’s vow of chastity did not bind him, and that he was free to marry if he chose. He showed me a number of Tyrrell’s letters, one of which bore on this point. At twenty-one he was made to sign a disentailing deed of the family property which he had not read or understood the meaning of. He is now about forty, and acts as private chaplain to the Shaftesburys at St. Giles’, where I met him in the summer. I drove him to-day to Storrington, where we had tea with Miss Petre, and visited Tyrrell’s grave with her. It is kept decked with flowers, and there were two persons, a man and a woman, kneeling there and praying. This is Miss Petre’s pious work. De Bary and I knelt also. There is yet no stone placed.

“De Bary is an interesting man, and on his own subjects is a good, though rather vague, talker. He is enthusiastic about the rights of the weak races of mankind, and is a good Nationalist in Ireland of the Horace Plunkett school. He was a member of the Roger Bacon Society, which had its meetings at Holmwood, with several other Capuchins. He has a high opinion of Gibson as entirely devoted to Sinn Fein. Gibson’s wife was sympathetic to a certain point, but, as a Catholic complained that he adopted ‘all the heresies.’ Mivart was one of the most notable of their members. It was Coventry Patmore who started the idea of the identity of Aphrodite and the Virgin Mary, which Mivart afterwards brought forward in one of his ‘Nineteenth Century’ articles. Jesus Christ, Mivart said, was first worshipped as identical with Æsculapius. De Bary is a great believer in Bishop Gore and his Christian Socialism, and he assures me that this section of the English Church is sound about India and the Zulus and other native questions in the British Empire. De Bary was a year earning his own living in America, where he says things are far worse than in England. He has been fortunate in getting into harbour at St. Giles’.

“_24th Sept._—Newbuildings. The Geneva Congress has been a success. Osman Ghaleb writes enthusiastically of young Goumah, who took the lead at the Egyptian meeting, speaking out well in answer to Keir Hardie (who had made a half-hearted speech), and had carried the Congress with him. They also carried an amendment omitting the complimentary telegram to the Khedive. It has had its effect here in England. The Budget debate, however, absorbs all English attention, and much depends on its issue both for Egypt and for India.

“Bernard Shaw writes to me: ‘We are in for a bad time in India I am afraid, but the Indians, like the Egyptians, must work out their own salvation, for we _cannot_ let them go on until they break loose, and until defeats and Empire shrinkage in other directions compel us to march out as the Romans marched out of Britain.’ Hall Caine, too, writes to me about his new Egyptian novel, ‘The White Prophet.’ The novel is fantastic, but will do good, as thousands of people will read it. He says in his letter: ‘I recall the fact that you kindly sent me “The Wind and the Whirlwind” at the time of its publication. I read your poem again while writing “The White Prophet,” and it may possibly occur that certain of my own passages are coloured by yours, etc.’ Cromer, he says, has been making efforts to influence the Press against his book, and he wants me to write in praise of it.

“_27th Sept._—Lady Cardigan’s Memoirs have been published, a really audacious book, surpassing everything of the kind that has yet been printed. Most of the stories in it relate to things well known in society, but which have only been talked about in private hitherto. There is very little that is new to me. One thing, however, I may say I know to be untrue, the story of Lord Ward’s first marriage, though the versions given of it here I have also heard. What I believe really happened (my informant being Mme. d’Usedom, who told it me forty and more years ago) is this: Miss de Burgh, who was a very pretty girl, had four young men who adored her, and who all had proposed to her. Among them were Lord Mount Charles and Lord Ward (afterwards Lord Dudley). There was another, however, whom she really loved, and finding herself with child to him and him unwilling to marry her, she wrote to the others in turn saying that she was now willing, on the sole condition that the wedding should take place at once. Ward accepted her terms and married her, and for some time remained ignorant of how it was with her, but finding it out at last sent her back to her parents, and a separation, not, I think, a divorce, took place. The wife, however, did not long survive it, and having miscarried badly of her child sent to her husband and begged his forgiveness, and he nursed her with all possible kindness to the end. Mme. d’Usedom said this was the account Ward had given her of the affair, and one that, if I remember rightly, Mount Charles had confirmed. Lady Cardigan’s story, a very different one, of Ward’s brutality was, however, circulated at the time, Ward being a man of strange idiosyncrasies with women and unpopular with men. She quotes as her authority Lady Duppelin, whose husband was one of the lady’s lovers and who doubtless got it through him from the lady—not a very reliable source. The occasion on which I heard my version was when I was staying with Mme. d’Usedom at S. Maurice in Switzerland in 1867, Lord Dudley being at the time on his second honeymoon there. Through Mme. d’Usedom I made acquaintance with him and his bride, whom I had known as Miss Moncrieff, and formed a high opinion of him in the character of middle-aged husband with a quite young bride. Though it was anything but a love marriage at starting (for she was in love with another man, Lord Tyrone, who had failed to marry her, and took Dudley as a _pisaller_), he was so assiduous and tactful with her that he succeeded in gaining her full devotion, and eventually she bore him sons and daughters not a few, and remained through life attached to him, although he was unfaithful to her. Blanche Hozier confirms my version of the story as being that told her by her mother, Lady Airlie, who knew Miss de Burgh well at the time of her marriage. She says that Dudley died of a too violent passion he indulged in for Sarah Bernhardt. I have a special recollection of a picnic in which we all took part at S. Maurice, and of Dudley’s having challenged me to race him a hundred yards down hill, one which, being then young and for a short distance light of limb, I won easily enough to his chagrin and, as I think, to his bride’s. She was a lovely girl, tall and framed like a goddess, but with an unlovely voice.

“_1st Oct._—Belloc was here to-day wanting to buy cord-wood for his winter’s firing. He tells me that Gorst is now looked upon at the Foreign Office as a complete failure, and that he himself acknowledges that the whole of his policy has broken down. He wants to leave Egypt for another post, but they cannot find anybody willing to replace him. ‘They missed their opportunity,’ Belloc said, ‘of making a deal about Egypt with Germany.’ This was to have been in connection with the Bagdad railway, but the revolution at Constantinople spoilt that. Gorst’s policy was what I always said it was, to convert the Egyptians through the Khedive to English ideas, and, of course, it has failed egregiously. Even the wretched old Legislative Council has rebelled, and has addressed a remonstrance against Gorst to Grey for what he said in his last annual report, and claiming a sort of Constitution. Lastly, Ronald Storrs writes from Cairo that he has just been given the succession to Boyle’s place at the Agency, another indication of a change of plan there. Boyle has been chief adviser of the Agency for the last twenty years, and has engineered the Cabal against the Nationalists, with the help of the Mokattam newspaper and the Syrians. Storrs has just been at Damascus. He knows Arabic well, and is an extremely clever fellow, and his appointment is significant. It probably means a change of policy, perhaps, a reversion to Cromerism, perhaps, though I don’t expect it, something really liberal at last, only all this is dependent upon politics at home and the fate of the General Elections.

“_2nd Oct._—Our shooting party arrived late last night, Winston and Clementine and Harry Cust and his wife; and we had an exceedingly pleasant evening. Winston was in excellent form, and as he and Harry are old and very intimate friends, the ball of conversation was kept rolling well. Harry described to us Asquith’s adventure with the Suffragettes at Lympne. He was there with Asquith and Herbert Gladstone, and the suffragettes assaulted Asquith, striking him on the face with their fists, or rather with their wrists (he gave a demonstration). He, Harry, was Secretary of the Golf Club and intervened, telling the women that whatever their dispute with the Prime Minister might be it was impossible they should be allowed to walk on the grass, as it was against the regulations of the Club. This, he said, impressed them. Asquith defended himself, and caught hold of one of the women and Herbert of another, and eventually got away in a motor. While they were at dinner a stone, a big block of granite, was thrown through the window of their room and fell within a yard of Margot. He says it will come to murder before long. The women were quite mad.

“Winston gave us a very full account of what his policy in the Budget dispute with the Lords would be. He began by saying that his hope and prayer was that they would throw out the Bill, as it would save the Government from a certain defeat if the Elections were put off. The Budget, once it became law, would be immensely unpopular, and everybody would be against it. It was therefore to the interest of the Opposition to let it pass. It seemed, however, likely that the Lords would throw it out. Then there were two courses, either to resign at once or to dissolve. He is for dissolving. Then if the Government came back with a good majority he thinks they could go in for a regular attack on the Lords’ veto. He thinks the King would go with them in swamping the House of Lords by a creation of peers, and so would abolish the veto. But, if only with a small majority, they would say the King’s Government could not be carried on, and would resign, when Lansdowne would be called on to form an administration; and he also being unable to carry on the King’s Government, would have again to dissolve. Thus it would no longer be a question of the Budget but of a quarrel between Lords and Commons, ‘and in time we should have all the forces on our side’—except the physical forces. Winston is an admirable and delightful talker; very clear in his ideas and with an extraordinarily ready wit. Harry, though also ready and witty, was nowhere at all with him in the discussion, which he tried to maintain from the Tory side. We had continued our talk after leaving the dining-room and got on the subject of India and George Curzon. Curzon, according to Harry, entirely lost his head in India; and after Broderick became Secretary of State, thought he could do what he liked. St. John, he said, had been George’s butt for thirty years. He had always laughed at him and would not treat him seriously. St. John, on the other hand, could not resist the temptation of having his little revenge on George, when at last he found himself George’s official superior, and was down on him on the first opportunity. As to the quarrel with Kitchener, whom Winston hates, calling him by very hard names, Winston explained how badly Curzon had played his cards. The quarrel between them he declared to have been this: when the question of the change in the Commander-in-Chief’s powers was introduced, Curzon agreed to it on condition that Burrows was appointed, and Kitchener agreed verbally to the appointment. At the same time, however, Kitchener telegraphed privately to the War Office saying that Burrows was quite unfit. This telegram, according to the espionage system practised in India, was laid before the Viceroy. ‘Curzon ought then,’ said Winston, ‘to have called on Kitchener to explain himself, accused him of being the liar and intriguer he was, and reported the whole thing to the India office, when it would have been Kitchener who would have had to resign. Instead of this he allowed Kitchener to bring the thing forward as a dispute about the Commander-in-Chief’s powers, where Kitchener was able to get the best of it. Curzon being Kitchener’s superior, ought never to have allowed this—and it ended in his having himself to resign.’ He lost his temper to such an extent that when Minto came out to relieve him he refused, contrary to all precedent of etiquette, to attend the ceremony of handing over his Governor-Generalship to the new-comer, and remained in his own room.

“Winston sympathizes much with my ideas about the native question in India, and in general about the enslavement of the coloured by the white race. But he says he is an Imperialist, and his chief interest is in the condition and welfare of the poor in England, who, he says, are far worse off than the poor in any part of the East. ‘I would give my life,’ he said, ‘to see them placed on a right footing in regard to their lives and means of living. That is what I am paid for, and I would really give my life.’ I can see all the same that my arguments have effect on him, just as they used to have with his father; and I should not be surprised if some day he made the Indian cause his own. Talking of Kitchener’s appointment to Malta he scoffed at Haldane’s pretence that this was destined to be a post of the highest military importance, comprising the whole of our military communication with India, ‘when,’ he said, ‘we all perfectly well know that our only road to India in war time is by the Cape.’

“To-day we shot hedgerows round about Gosbrook and Blinks Wood. Winston shot very well, though, of course, it was easy shooting. Both the ladies walked with us. Farid Bey and Osman Ghaleb had announced their arrival, which would have been most inconvenient; but, fortunately, did not appear, having, I suppose, received my telegram in time to put them off till Monday. It was a beautiful day, and all went off successfully.

“In the evening we had another great discussion of the fundamentals of politics, each of us holding our own ground. Mine was, of course, that of ‘Satan Absolved,’ to which Winston opposed one of optimistic Liberal Imperialism where the British Empire was to be maintained, in part by concession, in part by force, and the constant invention of new scientific forces to deal with growing difficulties of Imperial rule. He admitted, however, that India does not pay its expense to us in men or money; and it seems to me that he would be pretty easily persuaded to let it go, were the pressure severe enough. Like most of them, it is the vanity of Empire that affects him more than supposed profit or the necessities of trade, which he repudiates; also, doubtless, his military training counts for much in his Imperialism. He will come round to me in time. Harry Cust, with all his cleverness, was quite outclassed by Winston in the discussion, who has studied all these problems thoroughly, and is wonderfully quick in defending his position. He has just his father’s talent of seizing the points of a situation and driving them home in his replies. He fills me with admiration and delight. The two women took little part in the discussion, but sat in rapt attention. Mrs. Cust is a nice woman and her book, ‘Gentlemen Errant,’ which I have been reading, is a monument of historical research. He, though less attractively brilliant than Churchill, is wonderfully well equipped for talk, having a far greater knowledge of history and literature and a real poetic side, which in Churchill is wanting. His knowledge of poetry is wide, and he has himself written quite excellent verse. Both have wit and quickness of repartee and the power of epigram. It is first-class sword play between them.

“_3rd Oct. (Sunday.)_—To-day was rainy and nobody appeared downstairs till noon. But our talk began again at luncheon with new vigour. Then we went out to look at the stallions. I mounted Churchill on Rijim and took him with the others to Worleys to look at the mares, which gave us a fine exhibition of galloping and circling round us. Rijim showed himself nobly, and I promised Churchill he should ride him in the procession there would be one day when he went to open Parliament as the first President of the British Republic.

“Again we sat up till late. Among the many memorable things Churchill said was this: Talking of Dingra, he said that there had been much discussion in the Cabinet about him. Lloyd George had expressed to him his highest admiration of Dingra’s attitude as a patriot, in which he (Churchill) shared. He will be remembered 2,000 years hence, as we remember Regulus and Caractacus and Plutarch’s heroes, and Churchill quoted with admiration Dingra’s last words as the finest ever made in the name of patriotism. All the same, he says that he was strongly in favour of the law taking its course, even to the extent of refusing to give back the body of the hanged man to his friends for their own funeral rites. He quite understood that it would have been an additional torture to have commuted the sentence.” [For text of Dingra’s speech see Appendix III.]

“Churchill’s opinion of Lloyd George is high, but I doubt if he so regards any of his other colleagues in the Cabinet, though he is careful in his words about them. Of Burns he said, ‘His attitude is quite excusable. He has been attacked out of jealousy by his fellow Socialists past endurance; but he does not care. He has been three years in office, drawing £2,000 a year salary, of which he only spends £300. He has saved up all the rest. He can afford to snap his fingers at them.’ There was much discussion between him and Cust about Asquith’s character, and a comparison made by them between him and Arthur Balfour. ‘Asquith,’ Churchill said, ‘is a very simple-minded man, very ingenuous, but he has a wonderful talent for work, and the clearest possible head for business. He will sit up playing bridge and drinking late at night, and yet in the morning he will come to his office or to the House and enter into the most complicated business with his head entirely clear and work on for six or seven hours. He will attend committees and give full attention to every point of discussion, and draft amendments in his perfectly clear handwriting without altering a word clause after clause, and he is far and away the best speaker in the House. That is what gives him his power. He is single-minded and good. Arthur, on the contrary, is in his nature hard; he could be cruel. I call him wicked. He is very courageous, the most courageous man alive. I believe if you held a pistol to his face it would not frighten him. He is not appalled by adverse circumstances, by the number of his enemies. I look on him as my enemy, and I say this of him. The difference between him and Asquith is that Arthur is wicked and moral, Asquith is good and immoral.’ This was _à propos_ of a question put by Harry as to which of the two it would be pleasantest to spend a week with. According to both of them, Asquith of late years has gone morally downhill. From the Puritan he was, he has adopted the polite frivolities of society. Harry told stories of this, and compared him to Fox and Arthur to Pitt. He had gone all to pieces at one time, but pulled himself together when he became Prime Minister. He had lost his influence with the Radicals by his addiction to fine society. ‘But,’ said Churchill, ‘Lloyd George and I have re-established his credit with our Budget. It has put a stop to his social career.’ This evolution of the square-toed Asquith, with his middle-class Puritanical bringing up and his severity of conduct, into the ‘gay dog’ of London society is to me irresistibly funny. It needs a Balzac to deal with it properly. As to Morley, Churchill is silent, allowing me to attack him without defending him, and I think in his heart agreeing with me. We went over the whole history of Morley’s weakness in the Mahdi’s head case, and in that of his feeble opposition to the Boer War and his muddle-headedness about India. I think Churchill will come round to my views about India, for in all essentials he is at one with me; and he was fired at the description I gave him of his father’s doings at the India Office and at our formula, ‘The Queen and Native India,’ against the covenanted Civil Service.

“He is sympathetic, too, about the motor car tyranny, and talks of children being collected and carried to school so as to escape the dangers of the road. But he has no scheme of immediate protection for foot-goers, and says that flying machines will have superseded motors in ten years’ time as an amusement of the rich. He told me he had a scheme for settling the Somaliland folly on lines precisely the same as those I proposed five years ago—that is to say, by withdrawing the British troops to the seaports, and providing for the ‘friendly’ tribes, if they could not agree with the Mullah, elsewhere. I told him about the blood money way of settling accounts. Also he has urged a settlement of the Cyprus trouble by ending the swindle there in regard to the tribute. All this is excellent, and may lead to real Imperial reforms.

“_4th Oct._—They are all gone, much pleased, I think, with their visit.

“Farid Bey and Osman Bey Ghaleb arrived from Paris to talk over Egyptian affairs. They intend holding their Congress next year at Constantinople. I think that a good move. There seems to have been an intrigue at this year’s meeting at Geneva, the Khedive having got hold of one of their number, Mohammed Fehmi, in the interests of a rival party, the party of the people. It was only Goumah’s courageous speech that turned the tables against these.

“_5th Oct._—I have received a letter from Arabi after a long silence, congratulating me on my Congress manifesto. I am glad to get this from him, for it may be the means of putting him right with the young Nationalists. Belloc repeats to me that Gorst seems now quite discredited at the Foreign Office. His policy, as he himself admits, having failed, he wishes to be moved to another post, but there is difficulty in finding any one willing to succeed him.

“_7th Oct._—Churchill has sent me two secret minutes he had printed for the Cabinet two years ago about Somaliland and Cyprus. They are very plain spoken in the sense of our talk. He must have been Under-Secretary for the Colonies at that time. ‘There are only two secure alternatives,’ it says: ‘(A) To occupy the country effectively by holding all the important wells and, in concert with the Italians, to crush the Mullah, or (B) to withdraw to the coast as the Italians have done since, and as we did before the rise of the Mullah’s power.’ Winston recommends the second. Churchill’s second minute, that about Cyprus, dated 19th Oct., 1907, recommends the expenditure of the revenue being devoted to the improvement of the island, and that the tribute which goes to the holders of the Turkish loan should be paid by the English Exchequer, which is responsible for the Turkish loan it guarantees.

“_12th Oct._—George Wyndham and Mark Napier have been here to shoot. Last night we discussed the Indian question. George disapproves now of the Japanese alliance, and praises that with Russia. He says that it is quite impossible India should be made self-governing under two hundred years, or that the English democracy will ever consent to a withdrawal. But at the same time he is inclined to agree with me that England would be better without her Indian Empire. In old times, when England was governed by an oligarchy, the administration of India might have been gradually transferred to the natives, and so the country be set adrift, but not now. A Minister proposing to do so could not remain a month in office. This, of course, is true, but it is the same thing as admitting what Gordon said, that no reform was possible in India except by a revolution.

“Conny Lytton and Mrs. Brailsford have been arrested with other suffragettes and mean to starve themselves, and Brailsford telegraphs to me asking me to get George Wyndham to take up their case. George, however, of course would not do this, though he says he is opposed to these violences in prison against women, and we discussed the case of the treatment of political prisoners. He is more enlightened on this point than Mark, who takes a plain lawyer’s view. I have written to Brailsford in this sense.

“_15th Oct._—Conny and Mrs. Brailsford have been released by order of the Home Secretary, and Conny has written an extremely able letter to the ‘Times’ about her case. It will, I think, force their hand into altering the law about political prisoners.

“_25th Oct._—George Leveson Gower has been here shooting. Talking about the G.O.M. (Mr. Gladstone) whose private secretary George was from 1880 to 1885, he told a good story. At the time of the Kilmainham Treaty he had undertaken to expostulate with his master on the danger he was running by carrying on the negotiation through Mrs. O’Shea. He and Eddy Hamilton (his fellow private secretary) had talked it over together, and Eddy had said he did not dare approach the subject with Mr. Gladstone, but had no objection to George doing so. George opened the matter with what delicacy he could, mentioning Parnell’s connection with the lady; but the old man fired up at once, and made him an oration which George repeated to us, imitating exactly the old man’s voice and manner: ‘You do not mean,’ he said, ‘to ask me to believe that it is possible a man should be so lost to all sense of what is due to his public position, at a moment like the present, in the very crisis of his country’s fortunes, as to indulge in an illicit connection with the wife of one of his own political supporters, and to make use of that connection in the way you suggest.’ I asked George whether Mr. Gladstone negotiated the thing personally with Mrs. O’Shea, and he said, ‘Oh, no, not personally; he did not see her, but it was done through her.’ He also told us about Minto, as Viceroy of India, a mere nonentity in the Government, not even reading the most important documents laid before him. On one occasion they tested this by gumming the leaves slightly together, which he returned unopened. A third thing George narrated _à propos_ of Lady Cardigan’s memoirs, which have just been published. He went once to Dene with his father to look at a house, as they were staying in the neighbourhood at Apthorpe, and while they were being shown round came to the portrait of Cardigan riding in front of the Balaclava Charge, when his father nudged him and whispered that it was all fudge; Cardigan was not in the charge at all, being at the time on board his yacht, and only arrived on the field of battle as his regiment was on its way back from the Valley of Death. This sounds incredible, but George says his father was very positive that the thing was so.

“The chief excitement of the week has been the execution of Ferrar in Spain for complicity in the Barcelona insurrection. It has roused all the Socialism of the world to fury, and even in London there have been demonstrations, in which Cunninghame Graham has taken a leading part.

“_1st Nov._—Two events have occurred in the last week; an attack made on a convoy in Somaliland by the ‘Mad Mullah,’ in which three Indian Sepoys have been killed, exactly proves the folly of continuing to hold the Interior. The second is what is called a ‘punitive expedition,’ despatched by Gorst to Siwah. There my old friend Haboun has got into a quarrel with the Egyptian authorities by shooting the Maoun and two others, who had come to effect a domiciliary visit. A hundred and fifty men are now being sent from Alexandria to arrest him and restore order. [This resulted in the capture and hanging of Haboun.]

“_6th Nov._—Terence Bourke and Basil Blackwood are here. Terence tells me things are going not so badly in Tunis for the natives; and there seems to be less violent feeling against the French there than against us in Egypt. Basil has got an appointment at the Board of Trade. He is a pleasant fellow, astonishingly like his father in manner and voice.

“_12th Nov._—Neville came to dine and sleep. He is much interested just now in the Steinheil trial at Paris, through his intimacy with Geoffroy, whose mother was M. Steinheil’s sister, and he also knew the lady herself there in his student days. The Geoffroys had quarrelled with Mme. Steinheil, and Geoffroy’s father had even given evidence against her at the trial. As to her connection with President Faure’s death Neville gives me this account of it. She met Faure at some watering place ‘aux Eaux,’ and obtained an influence of passion over him; and it was in her arms that he died. She had been introduced privately into the Elyseé, and his hand in death was so tightly clutched in her hair that the hair had to be cut off. This fact and the possibility of political revelations regarding it seem to have influenced the prosecution into giving her every opportunity of an acquittal; and an acquittal seems intended.

“_19th Nov._—Lord Lansdowne has made the sensational announcement that he will propose an Amendment to the Budget Bill in the House of Lords to the effect that the Lords are not justified in passing it without an appeal to the country. This means a General Election in January. Margot, in a note to me of the 11th writes: ‘The Lords are mad; but I pray that they may help us to a good majority in January. There will be hot fighting for four weeks and not much holiday.’

“In Egypt the quarrel over the Suez Canal concession, against which there has been a strong Nationalist protest, has been solved by the Canal Company’s refusing the terms proposed. I have written to congratulate Farid on what is a victory for his party.

“_22nd Nov._—I have been reading the traveller Stanley’s autobiography. The description of his early life as a workhouse boy, and at sea, and as a vagabond in the Southern States of America is extremely interesting; and his wife, whom I used to know before her marriage, would have been well advised for his fame to have ended her volume there; for the later record, which is not strictly autobiography, reveals him as the type of all that is most repulsive in what are called our ‘Empire Builders.’ No book ever showed more clearly the demoralizing influence contact with savage life exercises on the average white man. Stanley, before he went exploring in Africa, though ill-bred and ill-educated, was a decent working-man with a modest opinion of himself and a good heart, but the position he found himself in in Africa filled him with the usual idea of being the representative of a superior race, with right of command over the people of the country he was travelling through, and little by little he got into the way of shooting them if they did not obey his orders, or provide him with food. All his later writing is an attempt to show that he had a high motive in excuse for these violences, the cause of Christianity, civilization and the rest, till he became a contemptible humbug. His journalism, too, as he gets to that point of his career, gives him the nauseous flamboyant style I remember in his lecture at the Albert Hall. He remained to the last the rough lout he began life as, with a veneer of sham romance added, which made his later life so despicable. Nevertheless, as was the case with Burton, his brutality gained him the devotion of a superior woman far too good for him. There are many points of resemblance between the two men revealed in their base countenances, though Stanley’s is the more ignoble of the two.

“Morley’s Indian reforms are published, poor things in truth, for though an unofficial majority is in name conceded to the Provincial Councils, it is not an Indian majority, the Anglo-Indian non-officials being counted in, so that there remains everywhere an English majority. Also the Government grants itself a power of vetoing the candidature of any Indian; this, with new powers of arbitrary arrest and of seizing newspapers and printing presses, leaves native India in a worse position than when Lord Morley came into office. Nevertheless, his sham reforms are a long step towards real revolution.

“_23rd Nov._—The Abbé Brémond, Tyrrell’s friend, who performed his funeral rights, has recanted his errors publicly and made apology at Rome, so poor Miss Petre is left out in the cold. I did not like the man when I saw him at Storrington.

“_24th Nov._—Lunched with George and Sibell. They had all been attending the debate in the Lords (about the Budget), the House crowded with peeresses and, George said, the most representative assembly he had ever seen, representing as it did every grade of society from royal princesses down to Rosie Boote, Marchioness of Headfort. George quite approves the fighting attitude of the peers and believes in his party winning at the General Elections. He has been doing a great deal of the fighting himself. George has written an excellent sonnet which he sent me a day or two ago.

“_25th Nov._—Called on Frank Lascelles. Talking about the Budget quarrel he told me he had a long conversation yesterday with old Joe Chamberlain. Chamberlain is paralysed but quite clear in his mind, though he has a difficulty in speech being unable sometimes to pronounce his words rightly. He assured Frank that the Tories would return to power with a large majority. In England, whatever it might be in Scotland, they would sweep the board. Then to luncheon with Winston and Clemmie. I told him of Joe’s prediction, but he declared the Government would remain with a clear majority of sixty after the election, independently of the Irish. About Somaliland he told me things had been arranged according to his wishes. The troops are to be moved to the coast. ‘I don’t call it evacuation,’ he said, ‘but concentration, it sounds better.’ This is satisfactory. I gave him the first copy of my ‘India under Ripon,’ which reached me on Monday, and we discussed the whole question of Empire over again and I find him much more favourable to my anti-Imperial views than he was two months ago. Indeed, he is almost converted to the view that the British Empire will eventually ruin England. ‘We get no advantage from it,’ he said, ‘and it’s a lot of bother. The only thing one can say for it is it is justified if it is undertaken in an altruistic spirit for the good of the subject races.’ I said, ‘Yes, but where do we find the altruism?’ and I repeated to him a story my hairdresser, Middleton, told me yesterday of how a military customer had come into his shop one day when old Lewis, his former master, was alive, and how he had spent ten minutes expounding to them the glories of the Empire, across the counter. ‘Old Mr. Lewis stood there all the time saying nothing, and the customer began to lose patience, “You don’t say a word,” he exclaimed, “now tell me Lewis, frankly, what your opinion of the Empire really is?” The old man seemed to think awhile and then in his deliberate way replied, “Well sir, you see, I have only been to the Empire twice and I didn’t find the entertainment amusing enough to go a third time.” He thought, or pretended to think, the talk had been about the Empire theatre. It was a good answer, but we lost our customer, he never came again.’

“Winston was brilliant as usual, and he inspires brilliancy in those about him. I found myself talking in epigrams and we had a merry rattling hour and a half before he was obliged to go back to his office, with intervals of domestic felicity, his baby being brought in with the coffee. There is no more fortunate man than Winston at home or in his political prosperity. He is quite ready, he says, for Irish Home Rule, and I expect him by degrees to adopt the whole of my programme, including my anti-Socialism. He believes in the acquisition of railways by the nation but is not for nationalizing the land, which, he says, will lead to endless jobbery, the nation being the worst of landlords. All this pleases me. He gave me in return for my Indian book a volume he has just published of his speeches.

“_30th Nov._—Hyndman writes me a long eulogistic letter about my Indian book, ‘India under Ripon,’ which has just come out, and asks me to help his candidature at the elections; this, of course, I cannot do, though he would be personally an acquisition to the House of Commons. He tells me he is sixty-eight (too old to begin).

“_4th Dec._—The Lords have thrown out the Budget by a majority of 260 to 75, and the Commons have passed a resolution by a majority of 250, saying the Lords had no right to do it. The Irish did not vote. So here we have war declared, it is pretended to the knife, but I expect it will end in some compromise; there is not stuff enough in the country to make a revolution.

“_5th Dec._—Belloc and his wife came to dinner. He looks for a 160 majority for the Government, and he expects a great creation of peers, hoping he himself may be one. There was much talk in Belloc’s random way about the corrupt practices of Governments and the sale of titles. Mark Napier was with us and defended Asquith’s integrity.

“Belloc has written a very amusing little squib in rhyme which he recited to us, a ballad of which the leading line is ‘And Mrs. James will entertain the King.’ If this comes to His Majesty’s ears it may stand in the way of his hoped for honour. I have been reading Belloc’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ and find it most interesting.

“_17th Dec._—That scoundrel, King Leopold of Belgium, is dead, the greatest ruffian of all those sitting in the high places of the Earth. I remember once having speech with him as long ago as 1863, when I was an attaché of the Madrid Legation. It was in the picture gallery in the Retiro where I was copying a Velasquez, and he and an aide-de-camp came behind me and looked over my work and talked to me for a few minutes about matters of art; a tall, black-bearded man, by no means ill- looking; he cannot have been more than thirty then. It is just a reminiscence and no more. The history of the Congo State will hand his name down to posterity as that of one of the most infamous among kings. He has, however, made a pious ending, and has received the sacraments, including absolution of his crimes, so our good Catholics of the Belloc school will doubtless say their prayers to him as to a saint. His death has disclosed the fact of a secret marriage made by him some years ago with a French girl who has borne him two sons more or less legitimate. It may give rise to dynastic complications, the papers say.

“_20th Dec._—The Unwins and Meynell dined with me. Great talk about the elections. The King, they say, strongly disapproved of the throwing out of the Budget by the Lords, and will create 300 peers. Redmond has declared in favour of the Liberals in virtue of a not very clear Home Rule pronouncement made by Asquith, but I trust he has got it in writing more clearly from the Cabinet or he runs the risk of being made a fool of should the Liberals return in power enough to do without him. Their safest policy would be to lower the Liberal majority, and I wrote about it some time ago to Dillon. If it is true that the King sides with Asquith, it is very important. Arthur Balfour has chosen the occasion of the elections for one of his influenzas.

“_31st Dec._—The year 1909 has been a notable one for the world, all that portion of it that most interests me, the deposition of the Sultan, Abdul Hamid, and of the Shah of Persia, with grave events in India. As to my own life I feel that I have come at last to its watershed, and that whatever happens henceforth can only be on the downward slope, not without its little pleasures perhaps, but still with no possibility of again ascending.