Chapter I: Death of Queen Victoria, 1901 (2)

“_2nd March (Sunday)._—Walked across the Park and lunched with Frederic Harrison. I sat next to Miss Hobhouse, recently come back from South Africa where she was prevented by our authorities from landing. She is an amiable middle-aged woman, much persecuted on account of her action in the concentration camps. People are rude to her, refuse to shake hands, and they get up to go when she enters a drawing-room. Others of the party were Henry Arthur Jones the playwright, young Trevelyan the poet, and Lady Gregory.

“In the evening with Lady Gregory to Newton Hall to hear Harrison deliver his farewell address on retiring from the leadership of the Positivists. The beginning of it was rather tame and I was dosing off when I was awakened by an allusion to my work in Egypt and hearing my name cheered. After this Harrison gave a really fine address, saying many hard things and true things of modern England, touching, too, from the fact of its being his last spoken word.

“_11th March._—Learned last night of the defeat and capture of Methuen by Delarey. The news of the capture was heartily cheered by the Irish in the House. It was the King’s wedding-day.

“_12th March._—Called on Father John Gerard, S.J., in Farm Street, whom I had last seen fifty years ago at Stonyhurst where he was my special boy friend. He had written to me, and hence my visit. I found him a worthy matter-of-fact Jesuit advanced in years but preserving just the little touch of romance which had prompted his letter to me about our childish school friendship when we were both twelve years old. He reminded me that we used to keep caterpillars in paper boxes and that I had insisted upon pricking holes in the lids in the form of the constellations so that the caterpillars inside might think they were still out of doors and could see the stars.

“_14th March._—Methuen has been released and the newspapers are full of praise of Delarey, the first time they have had a word of civility for any Boer since the war began.

“_15th March._—To the Zoölogical Gardens to look at Prevalsky’s wild horses, just arrived. They are miserable specimens, like the poorest and weediest of the New Forest ponies, coarse-headed, knock-kneed, cat- hammed and with drooping donkey tails, yet distinctly horses.

“_17th March (St. Patrick’s Day)._—To George Wyndham, who explained to me the difficult position he was in with the Tory Press on account of his Irish policy. ‘They are all waiting,’ he said, ‘to pounce on me because I won’t go their way in Ireland.’ He promised to tell me some day the whole history of the last fortnight, as to which I gather from him that he was obliged to threaten resignation rather than go in for a policy of extreme coercion, which has always failed and will fail again. Then to John Redmond in Wynnstay Gardens. I found him just arrived by the night train from Manchester, where he spoke on Saturday, but alert and smiling. It being St. Patrick’s Day, somebody had sent him a little box full of shamrock and he opened it and gave me a bunch which I shall try and grow at Newbuildings as it has a root, but he warned me it would never grow out of Ireland. We talked about George. He was perfectly aware how matters stood with him. ‘I am obliged,’ he said ‘to be fierce with him in public, but I know he is with us in his heart, and we all know it.’ I like Redmond, he is a thoroughly straightforward good fellow, strong and practical and self-reliant but not self-assertive, a worthy successor of Parnell. I was surprised to hear him regretting Rhodes’ illness and saying that he would be a great loss if he died. I asked him why, and he said that Rhodes has always been a Home Ruler about Ireland as part of his Imperial Federation scheme, and also because he thought the Irish quarrel ought to be settled in the interest of the Empire. Redmond had seen a great deal of Rhodes when he was in South Africa, and believed he still held to his Home Rule opinions. My own opinion of Rhodes, on this as on other points, is that he is a rogue and a humbug. The King and Queen are sending him their royal condolences about his illness.

“_21st March._—John Dillon was suspended last night in the House of Commons for calling Chamberlain ‘a damned liar.’

“_22nd March._—Dined in Park Lane and met there Lady Ormond and the Berkeley Pagets. George explained to me his new Irish Land Bill after dinner, which he does not profess to regard as anything but a makeshift. As far as I understand it, it is a scheme devised to buy up the quite small holdings in the West and group them into farms of fifteen and twenty acres. He again said that he was very averse from Coercion, but added that the Government might be driven into it, and it would then mean something much more than what had hitherto been done, and would involve the imprisonment of all the leaders of the League, and government by force in Ireland after the manner of a Crown Colony. He would do what he could to make things go quietly, but there were strong forces at work pushing to extremities, witness the ‘Times’ articles. I told him I was inviting Redmond to dinner, and asked him whether he would come. He said there was nothing he should like better, but it would be too dangerous in his present position, and as long as he was Chief Secretary.

“_24th March._—Took my niece Mary Milbanke, it being Lent, to a mediæval morality play, ‘Everyman,’ being just now revived, a terribly dreary business, which more than half reconciled me to having been born in the nineteenth century. These ancient plays have only an archæological interest and are impossible on our modern stage. They are worse than the worst comic parts of Shakespeare, which is saying a great deal, crude, childish, long-winded. The mediæval idea of life in Christian Europe with death and hell as a perpetual background of all pleasure, is repellent, when put nakedly before us in action. There is a brutality in the view of all pleasure being sinful, which is only tolerable when mixed with a large dose of scepticism, as in Boccaccio. These north of Europe plays with their serious intention are like having a bucket of cold and very dirty water poured over one for a joke.

“In the evening to hear an excellent lecture by Sir William Butler on Cromwell in Ireland, a most able and brilliant performance. I was asked to say a few words afterwards, and did so lamely enough.

“_25th March._—George has made a brilliant speech introducing his Irish Land Bill, and I see Redmond and his men are very civil to him. I pride myself on having contributed to this good feeling.

“_30th March (Easter Sunday)._—Rhodes is dead. I did the rogue an injustice when I thought he might be shamming as a pretext for getting away from the Cape and the prosecution of Princess Radziwill, in which he is implicated, but Rhodes was one of those of whom one always had to ask oneself, ‘_Quel interêt peut-il avoir en mourant?_’ The capitalist newspapers are, of course, full of his praises. He is supposed to have bequeathed a part of his millions for Imperial purposes. I look on him only as a lucky speculator, a gambler on rather wider lines than the rest, shrewd, or rather lucky, in his calculations for a long while, and then, having made a series of gross blunders, unscrupulous enough to save most of his own money at the expense of a war and ruin for everybody else. I suppose he will live in history as he has given his name to Rhodesia, and has engineered the Boer War. If the British Empire recovers from this and asserts itself permanently in South Africa he may count for something more, but it is quite certain that he miscalculated the whole Transvaal business. His pronouncements from time to time during the last five years have been always contradicted by events. Some people say this was only an excess of roguery. I think he really blundered and blustered and pretended to be wise to people who looked upon him, on account of his first successes, as an oracle. I have seen just the same thing at Homburg in the old gambling days, when a man who had broken the bank once was followed by admiring crowds, who credited him with supernatural intelligence, and went on believing in him till the day he lost all and disappeared. Rhodes had the intelligence to go away with a large share of his winnings in his pocket, but his friends have been ruined following his lead.

“My niece Mary Milbanke is with me. I am very fond of her; there is something soothing in her phlegmatic nature and absence of all ambition, personal or otherwise.

“_11th April._—37 Chapel Street. I entertained Miss Hobhouse at lunch with Meynell and Margaret Sackville, and we discussed Rhodes’ will, the topic of everybody’s talk. It is astonishing the general adulation bestowed on the man. People do not see that the £4,000,000 he leaves to public purposes are £4,000,000 robbed from the public and bequeathed to the ends of new robberies. Meynell was amusing and pleasant as he always is.

“_17th April._—St. George Lane Fox brought his cousin Lord Russell with him to lunch with me to-day. We talked over matters connected with Egypt and the attack I am making on Cromer as having tampered with the Criminal Courts at Cairo. Russell, though wrong-headed, is a very able man, and has legal experience and much practice in speaking as alderman of the London County Council and in Committees of the House of Lords. He is also quite fearless of Governments. I should not be surprised to see him some day Opposition leader in the Lords. He has a good presence, a good voice, and a wonderful memory. Our luncheon was amusing.

“_19th April._—Hunted from Fernycroft with the Foxhounds. Young Bron Herbert was out and rode with me very pluckily, poor fellow, with his cork leg replacing the one lost in the Boer War. He is a very clever and very nice young man, but has been captured for service on the ‘Times’—a bad education. His sister, he tells me, has joined the Theosophists and gone off to live in California.

“_26th April._—Lady Gregory called and took me off to dinner with her and Yeats and afterwards to a meeting of the Irish Literary Society, where the Cuchulain Saga was discussed. I spoke on it and so did O’Donnell, he partly in Irish, partly in English—an interesting man. Yeats also spoke well. He is a pleasant talker on his own subjects, and in appearance is of that most interesting dark Irish type with pale face and lank hair.

“_5th May._—Anne writes from Egypt announcing somewhat enigmatically that Cromer has had a final quarrel with the Khedive and is trying to depose him. I think this not unlikely, but it would be difficult for him to do unless the Great Powers were to decide to divide the Mohammedan States between them. This is nearly certain to happen some day. I suppose France will be given Morocco; Italy, Tripoli; England, Egypt; Germany, Syria and Asia Minor; Austria, Constantinople; and Russia, Persia. [Compare Secret Treaties of 1916.]

“_6th May._—Lunched with Ralph. He has decided at last to publish the great Byron Secret, and has drawn up the case against Byron and Mrs. Leigh in the form of a book called ‘Astarte.’ This is very ably done, but to my mind is marred by an introduction violently attacking Murray, the publisher, with whom he has quarrelled over Murray’s recent edition of Byron’s Works. I shall endeavour to get him to modify this; indeed, I think the whole thing might without much injustice to Lady Byron’s memory be let sleep. It is an ugly story, however told.

“_10th May._—Anne has returned from Egypt. I met her at Charing Cross and gave her breakfast here in Chapel Street and saw her off to Newbuildings, I being obliged to go to Ockham for Sunday with Cockerell, where Ralph is to consult us about ‘Astarte’ and its form of publication.

“_11th May (Sunday)._—At Ockham. Cockerell and I have spent the day trying to persuade Lovelace to omit his attacks on Murray, which are really undignified, and also, we think, unjust in so far as they concern the present representative of the firm.

“_18th May (Sunday)._—I have sent in my letter to Lord Salisbury. It went last night to Hatfield with a private note inside to Schomberg McDonnell explaining that I hoped Lord Salisbury would read it himself. It is a big venture as I am attacking Cromer personally, but in big game shooting it is safest to leave the antelopes alone and go straight for the rhinoceros. It being holiday time makes it a favourable moment.

“_21st May._—My bomb against Cromer has exploded with a real bang. The ‘Daily News’ gives it a leading article, the ‘Standard’ a whole column, the ‘Morning Post’ printed my letter to the Editor and a _résumé_, the ‘Chronicle’ and ‘Daily Mail’ are also good, only the ‘Times’ and ‘Telegraph’ fail us. It could hardly have made a bigger noise.”

The great publicity obtained on this occasion in the Press made it unnecessary for me to pursue it further, and it was agreed not to bring it forward in Parliament. There was, of course, not the smallest chance of obliging the Foreign Office to publish the correspondence, and the publicity was already obtained. Moreover, before the Foreign Office Vote came on for discussion the King’s illness had occurred, and nobody had any attention to pay elsewhere. The case was of importance, not so much in itself as from the demonstration it gave of the unscrupulous methods resorted to by our diplomacy at Cairo to hide its tampering with the Law Courts and whitewash the misdeeds of the Army of Occupation; the publicity made it possible for me later to fix on Cromer the responsibility of the scandalous Denshawai case.

“_29th May._—An early luncheon with George Wyndham and sat talking with him for a couple of hours, mostly on his Irish policy. I am amused to find him more and more of a Home Ruler, though he does not quite avow it. He seems to have found out that it is a choice between that and Government as a Crown Colony. I asked him whether he did not think the Local Self Government Bill in Ireland had played entirely into the Nationalists’ hands, and he admitted that perhaps it had, but it had been a necessary part of the general Unionist policy of treating Ireland precisely on the same lines as England. It might lead indirectly to a sort of Home Rule, that is to say it might come to a union of the local councils under one general council at Dublin which would practically settle all Irish affairs. In the meanwhile the law had to be carried out. There was hardly any real crime in Ireland; but where the law was very clearly broken the Crimes Act must be put in force. He believed the Irish leaders would secretly quite approve of this, for they did not want crime any more than the Government did. What had always been resented was the blundering in the choice of cases to be dealt with. On the whole, the thing as far as he was concerned was to get his Land Bill passed and his Catholic University Bill, both of which he meant to carry through, and get through his term of office as peaceably as was possible. He did not expect the Government to last out longer than October 1903.

“We talked also on the larger aspects of Imperialism, and he agreed with me that the violences done in connection with South Africa, necessary as perhaps they were, had had an ill effect on our national character, and that it might well happen that personal freedom and strict legality would both suffer here in England in consequence. I have been reading Stowe’s Chronicle of the reign of Henry VIII, and I reminded George of the destruction in a very few years of both freedom and legality, and how it had ruined the character of Englishmen to the extent that at the close of the reign each nobleman was ready to betray his fellow- conspirator, and each Bishop to recant his heresies, and each gentleman condemned to death to beg abject pardon of his King for having opposed him as if for a crime.

“_2nd June._—Peace has been signed at Pretoria. The country is thoroughly war sick, and I hope will so remain during my lifetime. King Edward was determined to have an end put to the fighting before his coronation, and I fancy the Boers have had better terms given them than people are aware of, and that the peace has been arrived at over Chamberlain’s head and Milner’s. Talking of Chamberlain on Thursday, George said of him that his character was completely misunderstood by the public, who, judging by his face, thought him a cool, unimpassioned calculator. He was just the reverse, being rash and impulsive in his decisions, to a great extent a political gambler, anything but a safe man to be at the head of affairs. George is beginning to learn things now he is in office.

“_3rd June._—Madeline Wyndham took me to tea at Apsley House with her son Guy and his wife and stepdaughter, a pretty child just out. The Duke and Duchess showed us all over the house from garret to cellar, or rather to the underground chamber, where the plate is displayed in huge glass cases. The old Duke must have had a passion for silver plate, for every crowned head seems to have presented him with some, the most magnificent being the gift of the Portuguese Government. This last includes thirty-two dozen silver dinner plates. It is unfortunately all of a date which leaves its value something less than the weight of the metal, though the Portuguese is better than the rest, enormous pieces of preposterous design of the time of George IV, practically unusable. There is something melancholy in such a vast display for every one except the head butler, who has the proud charge of it. The Duke and Duchess, however, take a full interest in it all, and explained everything in detail to us very amiably. They are excellent people, he rather stiff and formal as becomes the representative of his great ancestor, whose half whisker he imitates; she a good-natured soul, and both without pretension. They have only succeeded to their kingdom within this last year. Upstairs the great ballroom is a really fine thing, hung with a few good pictures and many bad ones, the best the ‘Velasquez’ obtained in Spain, and a sweet little religious picture of two panels, I know not by whom; it is called an Albert Dürer. We had tea in the garden under the old thorn trees just in full blossom. An interesting visit.

“_4th June._—To bid good-bye to Rowton at his house in Berkeley Square. He has been very ill, and is going away on a sea-voyage to the Cape and back, which he thinks will set him right. I hope, indeed, it may, for I have a considerable affection for him. His rooms, which had been newly cleaned and decorated, looked bare and uncomfortable. He complained of having no one to look after him or hang his pictures, or arrange his furniture—the misery of never having married. ‘You see me,’ he said, ‘in my sixty-fourth year, and I have never proposed to any woman in the way of marriage, and there is no one who will care whether I live or die.’ He has been through a terrible time, having one of his ribs cut out by Bennett at St. George’s Hospital. ‘It was a question of life or death in twenty-four hours, and I said “Do it.”’ He asked me what I had myself felt when at the point of death, and I told him, ‘A great indifference.’ ‘It was the same with me,’ he said, ‘I did not care which way it might go.’ It is strange to see a man with so many friends yet apparently so little loved. There is nobody who looks after him, no woman who spends her time with him, not even a nurse, nobody he thinks that loves him. This must be terrible. Neither has he any religion to give him a false hope, nor even a belief in his own philanthropic work. His nearest thing to a creed is his worship of his old master, Disraeli.

“Then I went on to see John Dillon, and had a long talk about Ireland. He is rather sceptical of George Wyndham’s Nationalist sympathies, and says that he is putting the Coercion Act in force more vigorously in some ways than Arthur Balfour did formerly. He gives hard labour now as well as imprisonment, with a view to disqualifying men from serving on County Councils. Dillon also talked much about the peace in South Africa, as to which his views are much the same as mine. He was pleased at my calculation that each Boer, man, woman, and child annexed will have cost the British Government just £1.000. He talked strongly of the ineptitude of the Liberal leaders in the House of Commons.

“Had tea with Princess Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, whom I had met at Clouds in the autumn. She is living in a very small house in Queensbury Place, which she has decorated with an enormous Union Jack in honour of the peace. With her I found an old friend, Mary Hughes, her lady-in- waiting, and a visitor, one Landon, who has been ‘Times’ correspondent for the last five years in South Africa. Landon gave us a long account of the origin and rise of the war, which was extremely interesting. Inspired by the Princess’s sympathy, who interjected at every mention of a Boer or of a pro-Boer, ‘He ought to have been shot—he ought to have been hanged,’ he unfolded all his budget, and let us into many secrets. ‘I am perhaps,’ he said, ‘the only man who has ever ventured to ask Mr. Chamberlain directly, whether he knew of the Jameson Raid before it happened. I had myself known it was intended nearly a year before, as it was talked of quite openly at Johannesburg as due to take place at the end of the year, and it did in fact take place on the 31st of December. Mr. Chamberlain, in answer to my question, said, ‘Well, I was consulted as to what would be the attitude of the Government in the case of a _bona fide_ popular rising at Johannesburg, and my answer was that if it was _bona fide_ the High Commissioner would be instructed to intervene to restore order, and of course that would have meant by the forces of the Crown.’ ‘As a matter of fact,’ Landon explained, ‘the raid as nearly as possible succeeded. What hindered its success was that the Johannesburgers could not make up their minds what flag they should hoist, the Union Jack or the flag of a Republic, and they had agreed to send a Commissioner to Cape Town to settle this question, and while they were awaiting the answer Jameson grew impatient, for his men got tired of doing nothing, and were drifting away from him, and he resolved to risk the coup. Jameson was always a gambler. When he was making £2,000 a year as a Doctor, he used to lose £1,000 and £1,500 a night at cards, and he treated the raid in the same gambler’s spirit. He had 500 men still with him, in another week he would have had only fifty, and he played his stake. If the Johannesburgers could have made up their minds, they could have got possession of the fort and with it of the whole situation, for all the ammunition, artillery, and supplies of the Transvaal were there, and there were only seven men to guard it. The thing might have been done quite easily. As it was it failed through Jameson’s folly. He ordered the advance in spite of seventeen telegrams he received ordering him to stop, including one from the Queen. ‘Yes,’ said the Princess, ‘Grandmama has several times told me long before it happened, that she only hoped to be spared living to see another war in South Africa.’

“Landon also told us about the part Schreiner had played in what he called ‘the black week.’ Schreiner had up to that time been the trusted leader under Hofmeyr, of the Bond, but he had the wit, Landon said, to see that the defeat of the British armies would oblige England to destroy the Dutch Republics, and he came over secretly to Milner. It was this that prevented a general rising in Cape Colony, for all trusted Schreiner, and when he advised against it the Dutch followed him. He spoke of the Orange State as a model of good Government, honest in all branches of its administration, and on good terms with the English Government. I pushed him to say what reason there was for the war, which he avowed was forced on by our side. He said it was one entirely of racial ascendancy, and that if matters had been left alone for a few years more, the Dutch would have become predominant in South Africa. When I further asked what harm there would have been in that, his reply was that a Dutch Government would have been a corrupt one, after the fashion of the South American Republics. I walked back with him as far as Hyde Park Corner.

“_10th June._—A lecture by Yeats at the Clifford’s Inn Hall in explanation of his theory of recitation. As an entertainment it was excellent, as he had got three ladies who recited admirably to the accompaniment of the psaltery invented by Dolmetsch, who himself took the chair at the meeting and explained everything musically. Yeats, however, was far from convincing me that the method was either new or good as a way of reading poetry, indeed it reduced the verse to the position it holds in an opera libretto. It was impossible to distinguish whether the words were sense or only sound, and the whole effect depended on the reciter.

“_11th June._—With Neville to another lecture to hear Bernard Shaw defend his position as a Socialist (especially as to the part he had taken against the Boers in the late war). It was a very clever performance, for he is a brilliant and ready speaker full of paradox and ingenious jesting, but it was clear his socialist audience was not much with him, and it was impossible to take his doctrines seriously. To me the Fabian position has nothing to recommend it. It is socialism without the few humanitarian virtues which commonly go with it, without romance and without honesty of principle, only opportunism.

“_15th June (Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Yeats is here with others, and we had an afternoon of poetry, but all agreed that Yeats’ theories of recitation were wrong, useful only for concealing indifferent verse. When he recites it is impossible to follow the meaning, or judge whether the verse is good or bad. All the same he is a true poet, more than his work reveals him to be, and he is full of ideas, original and true, with wit into the bargain. We all like him.

“I am trying to dramatize one of the Cuchulain episodes for Yeats to bring out next year in his Cuchulain cycle of plays at Dublin [‘Fand’].

“_23rd June._—The whole of London is decorated for the Coronation, the line of the processions being barricaded with stands for spectators, covered with red cloth. Though the decorations are not generally in the best taste, the general effect is gay, and the grime of London is clothed and put out of sight. Very few modern buildings are not improved by being faced with scaffolding. Immense crowds parade the streets, and traffic is blocked.

“_24th June._—A bolt has fallen from the blue. The King is ill, has undergone an operation, and the Coronation is postponed.” [So little was the misfortune expected that the King and Queen had been photographed, robed and crowned in anticipation. I have one of these photographs by me still. There never was so dramatic a misfortune.]

“_25th June._—Called at Dorchester House to write my name down for Princess Hélène, who with her husband represents the King of Italy at the Coronation, and at 35 Park Lane to give Lettice her wedding gift and the Sonnet I have written her. I found her with Lord Beauchamp, her fiancé, a good looking, smooth faced young man, who complained much of the deception that had been practised on the public in regard to the King’s illness. Passing through the Park I found Rotten Row crowded, not a trace of trouble on any face, though the newspapers talk of general gloom. On the contrary, streets are full of gay sightseers, satisfied to look at the decorations since there will be nothing more. Returning after dark I found the Park still crowded, but almost exclusively by lovers who occupied each bench in pairs reposing, according to the naïve London custom, in each other’s arms.

“_5th July._—The day of our horse sale. I am camped at Caxtons very pleasantly. As a social function all went off most prosperously. Five hundred and ninety people had accepted invitations, and some five hundred sat down to luncheon. Also the quality of the guests was exalted—Princess Louise, the Sultan of Perak with a turbaned suite, Pertab Singh, Maharajah of Idar with the same, some twenty Colonial big wigs, including Barton, Prime Minister of the new Australian commonwealth, and a fair show of our own Lords and Ladies. My health was proposed by Lord Egerton, and I made a rather longer speech than usual in reply. There was no hitch in any of the arrangements, and all the world was pleased. The sole thing wanting was the presence of buyers for the horses. It was the worst sale we have had in all our twenty years, as last year’s was the best.

“_10th July._—Newbuildings. Hilaire Belloc came to see me and stayed to dinner. He is a very clever fellow, a good talker, and a powerful wine drinker, as his book, ‘The Path to Rome,’ indicates. (I had not met him since sometime in the eighties, when he came as an Oxford undergraduate to consult me on a plan he had of bringing out a Catholic magazine.) We had an amusing evening trotting out paradoxes.” [This entry records Belloc’s arrival to take up his residence in Shipley, who was afterwards to prove so good and interesting a neighbour to me for so many years.]

“_13th July (Sunday)._—Labouchere and his wife and daughter, Bill Gordon and Sibyl Queensberry are here (Newbuildings) for a Sunday visit. Labouchere in the highest possible form, brimming over with wit and good stories, the most brilliant talker in England, now Oscar Wilde is gone. Gordon, too, is no bad talker on his own subjects. Labouchere is to retire from Parliament at the dissolution, and has bought Michael Angelo’s Villa at Florence, where he means to live. He is busy pulling the Villa about ‘to suit it,’ he says, ‘to modern requirements,’ uprooting old trees in the _podere_ and planting new ones. About this vandalism, as about all else, he is shamelessly amusing. ‘Old Michael,’ he explained, ‘didn’t understand how to make a house comfortable, it’s time we should teach him.’ His daughter tells me he is a model father, always in good humour, and never scolding her. Indeed he is full of private kindnesses in spite of his public ferocity, and they are a very happy family. I like them all. We sat up till half-past one last night, and he must have told quite a hundred stories and nearly all new. To-day Belloc joined us at dinner, and proved too talkative for Labouchere, who would not compete with him.”

“The Duke of Norfolk’s undeveloped son is dead, and Meynell, whom I saw on Friday was full of anecdotes about him, tragical enough, from his birth, which when it happened was considered an event of the extremest significance in all the English Catholic world, down to this drear conclusion. Perhaps the most pathetic incident was when he was on pilgrimage at Lourdes to which place they repeatedly went in search of a miracle for him. As the ducal party approached the shrine they found themselves face to face with a crowd of joyous French peasants chaunting in honour of a cure which had just been wrought, and the verse of the psalm they were singing was ‘He hath filled the hungry with good things, but the rich he hath sent empty away.’ ‘We shall have no miracle,’ said the Duke, and the Duchess burst into tears. The boy as he grew up had a beautiful face, but he had no mind, and he never learnt to speak. The only words he knew were ‘Pretty boy, pretty boy,’ which he had heard strangers say who came to see him, and he repeated these when he became excited mechanically. His father spent several hours every day with him, but he did not know his father, except as a playfellow, and when the Duke came back from his campaign in South Africa the boy had clean forgotten him. This was a sad wound to the Duke. The Duke, some think, will never remarry. He considers that he resisted a vocation when he did not become an Oratorian, and that he was accursed for this in his son by Heaven. He is more likely to end his days as a priest. The little Lord Arundel is to be buried to-day.

“_14th July._—Lord Salisbury has resigned, and is succeeded as Prime Minister by Arthur Balfour. This has disappointed the extreme Imperialists who have been intriguing for the last four years for Chamberlain, but I think Balfour will be found just as uncompromising a Jingo as the other; however, it makes for morality in England, and so on the whole I am glad.

“The Tower of St. Mark’s at Venice has fallen, its foundation probably undermined by the wash of the steamers and the dredging of the canals.

“_21st July._—There are to be changes in the new Cabinet, Hicks Beach has resigned and Lord Cadogan, so George Wyndham will get his step whether he stays in Ireland or not.”

The first fortnight of August was spent by me in making my annual driving tour, this time through East Sussex, and afterwards for a month at Fernycroft, writing my play, “Fand,” with other poetry. I find nothing of political importance in my diary for many weeks. In November I was for a week at Gros Bois and Paris, where I found everything in a state of political quiescence, all that was being talked of being a certain growth of Socialism. On the 22nd, being about to start finally for Egypt, I went to see George Wyndham in Park Lane, and he gave me a full account of his plans for Ireland. Next session he is to bring in a bill to deal finally with the land question on the basis of compulsory purchase, aided with English credit. He has got a majority, and more than a majority of the Irish landlords to agree to it, and thinks he can carry it through at a cost, if I understand him rightly, of about seventy millions. The extreme cost he put at £120,000,000, the security for which from the English taxpayer is to be got out of the Public Aids given to the local rates, which will be stopped if the tenants of the County aided fail to pay their yearly rent. He intends to deal very liberally with the readjustment of the financial relations of England with Ireland, and the money thus paid annually to Ireland will be the security of the Land Purchase settlement. Lastly, he will endow a Catholic University. I asked him what he thought would be the outcome of all this if it was effected, Home Rule or a closer Union. He admitted that it would probably lead to Home Rule, but said it was not his business to look so far ahead. Indeed if he carries out all he talked of he will have done enough for one man. As to coercion, he said his revival of it was the price he had had to pay for obtaining a free hand from his colleagues in the Cabinet. He had made large use of the London press, and the support of the “Times” could only be bought by coercion. George was in his most sanguine and optimist vein, and felt certain of success. We were interrupted at this point, and he promised to look in on me at Chapel Street in the afternoon. This he did, but we were no longer alone, and the Irish talk was not renewed.