Chapter XI: General Trouble in Eastern Europe (3)

“_30th April._—George Wyndham was here to-day. Talking of Winston’s recent outburst on the Marconi business, he thinks he (Winston) will be Prime Minister one of these days. Grey, however, will have a first claim before him, being by birth a traditional Whig, though very inferior to Winston in ability. We had much talk, too, on family affairs.

“_12th May._—Winston writes from the train while on his way to join the Admiralty yacht, the _Enchantress_, with his wife and Margot and Asquith and Eddy Marsh at Venice. They are all to cruise together in the Mediterranean during the Whitsuntide holidays.

“_18th May (Sunday)._—Farid Bey has written from Geneva asking me to join his society, _Le Progrès de l’Islam_, and I have taken advantage of it to write a final letter to be read at the Egyptian Congress about to be held there. I think we, with our paper ‘Egypt,’ may claim to have converted Grey, or at any rate Asquith’s Cabinet, from its active hostility to Islam by encouraging the Islam Moslems to show their teeth on the subject. Certain it is that the Foreign Office policy has undergone a change in the last two months. Grey is now working with the German Government for the re-establishment of the Sultan’s Asiatic Empire—the project of annexing or proclaiming a Protectorate over Egypt is abandoned, and every attempt is being made to pacify Mohammedan feeling. As a clear sign of this new policy, Sir Gerald Lowther has been recalled from Constantinople, where he had intrigued for the past three years against the Young Turks. I have embodied this in writing to the Society.

“I have been reading Lady Gregory’s new Irish comedies. They are altogether excellent. The dialogue has qualities which remind me of ‘The Assemblies of Hariri.’

“_23rd May._—The news from European Turkey is all of quarrels between Bulgarians and Greeks and Servians over a division of the spoils, but in this I take small interest, or in the fate of Albania, where the Moslems have earned their misfortunes. Theirs is a lost cause. At Constantinople an understanding has been come to between Germany and our Government to keep Russia out of the Bosphorus and the Sultan in authority there under a kind of joint control. Anything is better than Grey’s policy of the Entente with Russia. It means another twenty or thirty years’ life for the Ottoman Empire. In consideration of this Grey has been allowed a Protectorate of the Persian Gulf, and the last news is that Ibn Saoud has occupied El Katíf, and that the Turkish garrison there has been shipped back to Busrah.”

This last piece of my Constantinople news, though it unfortunately proved to be less than true, indicates, I believe, ideas then current at the Foreign Office connected with an undoubted attempt being made at that time to smooth down things with the Berlin Government. It seems to have failed through the opposition of the Russian Government to the recognition by England of the full German claim of extending their interest in the Bagdad railway to the Persian Gulf.

“_31st May._—Both Farid Bey and Abdul Ghaffar write from Cairo in gratitude for my services to Egypt.

“_2nd June._—A good letter from Syud Mahmud at Benares. I have been drafting a letter of advice according to his request to the Indian Moslems, which will also be a farewell message to my Mohammedan friends everywhere. I am glad to see that Kiamil Pasha has been refused permission to remain at Constantinople. It is a great slap in the face for Grey, whose special _protégé_ he was, and for Cromer and Kitchener, and all the Cairo gang.

“_4th June._—There is news from Constantinople that a treaty has been concluded between England and the Porte guaranteeing the integrity of the Sultan’s remaining dominions for forty years. That is till 1953. It sounds improbable, but there is certainly a great effort being made just now at the Foreign Office to regain the friendship of the Moslem world.”

All this, alas! proved untrue news, though it doubtless represents a phase in Grey’s diplomacy when a better thought for a while prevailed with him, as here suggested, of regaining the friendship of the Moslem world, and at the same time of Germany. But his unfortunate Ententes with France and Russia always prevented an honest understanding. Egypt especially stood in the path of a settlement, and Russia’s unwillingness that her partner in Persia should agree to any extension of German influence in Mesopotamia. The peace of the world was practically sacrificed by Grey at this time through his obstinate weakness about Egypt and his bondage at Bagdad to the Czar.

A more terrible tragedy than poor Ryan’s death and one which, even more absolutely than that determined me on my retirement from all active work in the great world, was the sudden and entirely unlooked-for death of my dear cousin, George Wyndham, so long the link which bound me closest to it. It was a blow which struck me to the inmost fibres of my heart, bewildering in its unexpectedness, and touching me on every side of my existence.

His last letter, written a few weeks before, had given no hint of any failure of health or of anything but his usual delight in life and his especial joy in his son Percy’s marriage. It had been written in acknowledgment of a trifling wedding present I had sent, chosen expressly because I knew that it would be appreciated by George rather than for any other reason. It was a fine old edition of “Ronsard,” a folio of 1609, a thing of all others I knew that George would delight in. It is thus he had written: “Your wedding present to Percy is, in fact, a most priceless gift to me. I know and love that ‘Ronsard.’ Percy has been soldiering with his General all over the south-west of England, so we only met to-day on the eve of his marriage. He had, as I had not, opened the parcel, and will thank you. He proposes to put the ‘Ronsard’ in my library. . . . These days have been tense. Rosebery, I don’t know why, asked me to dinner yesterday week, the 8th April. He felt then that unless the Emperor of Russia could squash the King of Montenegro there might be a mobilization here before Percy’s wedding. But those clouds are dispersed, so we have enjoyed the preliminaries of Percy’s nuptials. We had a display of gifts at Ribblesdale’s house this afternoon, and a dinner of both families at Grosvenor House this evening. We all feel that politics are a bore, and should be quitted by honest men, and that soldiers are menaced. So, as you won’t come to Clouds, _we_ (by which I mean Percy, Diana, and myself) hope in the interval of peace to invade you at Newbuildings in the course of the summer. I would like you to see Percy and Diana in the prime of their mating. It is just possible that they have hit off an alliance of heroic love, combined with matrimony. If this should prove to be so they are lucky. In any case they are happy to exorbitance for the moment. For the moment they are lovers, and they ought to visit your shrine and lay a wreath at the feet of Proteus. As a rule, people do not know how to love; as an exception, they love now here, now there; as a rarity, almighty lovers find each other after both are married. It is extravagant to suppose that Percy and Diana are going to be lovers and also husband and wife, but it is pleasant to contemplate the hypothesis. In any case I ought to take them in their youth and delight to see you. Your affectionate, G. W.”

It is impossible for me to tell here all that George was to me and what I lost by his death. He was my nearest male relation, and very much my nearest friend. I had looked upon him as the inheritor after me of our family traditions, and in some measure of my family possessions as trustee and knowing all. No thought had ever crossed my mind that I could have the misfortune to survive him. Although on politics we were a whole world apart, on all things else we were in perfect unison of thought and taste and literary sympathy. I find this in my diary:

“_10th June._—I have thought of nothing else to-day but George. Only yesterday, before I knew of his death, I had taken down from its shelf his little book on Ronsard, and had begun reading it again. The preface is one of the most brilliant pieces of writing I know and the translations in verse are admirable. His poetry belonged to his hidden life, of which I knew more than the rest of his friends. In nearly his last letter to me, when writing to announce his son Percy’s marriage, he says: ‘I write at once to you because you and one other are near to me in all that really touches my life. I am determined to be your guest with luck when the birds are in chorus, and in any case when the wild roses bloom. You are fortunate. To select and print poetry seems to me—after influenza in a dark drizzle damned to the hell of politics—an inconceivable extravagance of joy. Now if this world was made for joy (if it was not made our revolt should be for joy), you are accomplishing the design of the great artificer; or else (if he never was) helping to fill the gap of his non-existence; but I, good lack! am a member of Parliament! I mean, however, to escape and to get you to London to see pictures and plays, or to go to you to hear the birds and see the blossoms.’ And here is June and he is dead!”